Rachel Dolezal, the 37-year-old head of a local NAACP chapter in Washington, has been falsely portraying herself as a black woman, according to her mother.
Ruthanne Dolezal said Thursday that she and her daughter have been estranged for years. She says the family background is Czech, Swedish and German — with “faint traces” of Native American. She claims her daughter started to falsely claim she was black eight or nine years ago.
Asked about her mother's claims, Rachel Dolezal avoided answering questions about her racial and ethnic background directly, according to the Seattle Times.
The Times said Dolezal answered only by making reference to studies that modern humans first evolved in Africa, saying, “We’re all from the African continent.”
Dolezal is a part-time professor of Africana Studies at Eastern Washington University and serves on a citizen police commission - an appointment she got after identifying herself as African-American on her application.
The Times says Rachel Dolezal has also said “she has biracial parents, was abused by a step-father, and lived in South Africa as a child.” But her parents say there has never been a step-father and she never lived in South Africa.
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