Rachel Dolezal, the former president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington, infamously ousted in 2015 for lying about being Black, says she still can’t find a job.
In an interview on “The Tamron Hall Show” Monday, Dolezal — who also worked as professor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University and holds a masters of fine arts from Howard University — said she’s still being misunderstood after the identity fiasco.
“I started with applying for all of the things I was qualified for, and after interviews and getting turned down, I even applied to jobs that didn’t even require degrees,” she said, including “being a maid at a hotel, working at a casino. I wasn’t able to get any of those jobs either.”
Dolezal told Hall she wishes “people could see me more for who I am than the what.”
“A mother, an activist, and an artist … that’s really who I am,” she said. “When it comes to race and identity, I’ve always identified racially as ‘human’ but have found more of a home in Black culture and the Black community, and that hasn’t changed.”
“I’m still doing the work, I’m still pressing forward, but it has been really tough for sure,” she told the host.
“Not having a job for six years, having to create my own job and find my own ways to provide for my children through braiding hair, through grant writing to bring funds into marginalized communities and Black-owned businesses and non-profits, through painting, through doing pep talks on Cameo.com.
“It’s definitely been a long six years,” she said. “But I really strongly believe that as a person, you have to just continue to be who you are. And you can’t change who you are.”
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