Rachel Dolezal made a recent appearance on the Tamron Hall Show and talked about the hardships she's faced since the controversy surrounding her race made headline news in 2015. While working as a professor of Africana Studies at Eastern Washington University and President of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington, an old photo of Dolezal revealed that she was White woman identifying as a Black woman.
Since being accused of cultural appropriation, Dolezal still identifies as Black or "transracial" and believes she's been misunderstood.
"What I really wish is [that] people could see me more for 'who' I am [rather] than the 'what,'" Dolezal said. "A mother, an activist, and an artist, that's really who I am. 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."
Dolezal added that she's still the same person she was in 2015, but has had trouble providing for her family due to her controversial stance on her identity.
"I'm still doing the work, I'm still pressing forward, but it has been really tough for sure," Dolezal added. "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. So it's definitely been a long six years 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."
Dolezal, who has two degrees, detailed her job search process. She stated the 2015 controversy has prevented her from securing jobs she's qualified for as well as jobs that she's overqualified for.
"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 continued. "Being a maid at a hotel, working at a casino — I wasn’t able to get any of those jobs either."
When questioned about changing her stance on how she identifies herself, Dolezal responded, "If I had changed, there would be this, you know, flip-flopping or somehow scrapping everything under pressure, but this is really just who I am. I really believe that if I’m going to continue to live, I have to continue to be who I am in the midst of pressure."
