Poll: Most Black Voters Wanted Rachel Dolezal to Stay at NAACP

A majority of black voters think Rachel Dolezal, the former president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP who lied about her race, should have stayed in her position, according to the results of a recent Rasmussen Reports telephone survey.

Dolezal resigned her post earlier this month during a media firestorm following revelations that she misrepresented herself as being of mixed race when her parents disclosed that they are white. Photographs of Dolezal as a child show a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl; she has undergone a striking physical transformation over the years.

Dolezal "did not explain why she had dyed her hair, darkened her skin and misrepresented herself as a mixed-race black woman for much of the past decade," The Washington Post reported.

Fifty-six percent of voters overall agreed with Dolezal’s decision to resign, according to Rasmussen Reports, while just 25 percent said she should have kept her job. Eighteen percent were not sure.

When broken down by race, however, 52 percent of black voters said they thought Dolezal should have remained in her role with the NAACP, compared with 20 percent of whites and 32 percent of other minority voters.

Sixty-five percent of voters told pollsters that racial identity should be based on birth, not preference.

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