Surprise, The Leader of The Spokane NAACP Is Montana White (update)

These are indeed strange days we find ourselves living in. With racial tensions high and talks of race dividing and subdividing into furiously apposing viewpoints, along comes one Rachel Dolezal, president of the Spokane NAACP, claiming to be black but, in actuality, turning out to be really really white. Read on.

Some are calling it "blackface." Some are saying she has been completely dishonest about her identity with the public. And Washington's black community is really disgruntled.  Rachel Dolezal, 37,  head of the local chapter of the NAACP, has identified herself as at least partly African-American, though a moment's reach turns up the fact that her parents, Lawrence and Ruthanne, are a very Caucasian couple from Montana. There are adopted children in her family who are black, but this doesn't, of course, make a lady with Czech, Swedish and German and a bit of Native American heritage, black...at all. Her parents have said she began to "disguise herself" as black after the family adopted the four African-American children.

“She’s clearly our birth daughter, and we’re clearly Caucasian — that’s just a fact,” Lawrence A. Dolezal said in an interview with the New York Times “She is a very talented woman, doing work she believes in. Why can’t she do that as a Caucasian woman, which is what she is?”

Interestingly, a BBC journalist talked to Dolezal in 2011 and she told them, "she was of mixed racial heritage but that she primarily identified with her black ancestors. She matter-of-factly listed the abuse she says she received at the hands of racists, including threats, break-ins, and nooses being left at her workplace." 

To the moment of this writing, Dolezal had not spoken to the press. When I first read about this story, and noticed that every picture of Dolezal seemed to feature her in a different ethnic hairstyle, I haven't been able to stop thinking Amy Poheler should play her in the movie. Because I'm a shallow comedian and that's where my brain goes. Now, the folks over at Buzzfeed has even put together a who’s who of actresses capable of playing Dolezal. Not to make light of what I'm sure is a very serious situation, with deep ramifications, especially for the folks in Spokane, none of whom apparently have noticed the President of the local chapter lady with the tan and the Erykah Badu hairstyle is really really white.

*UPDATE* She has officially stepped down from her position and spoke with The Today Show about the situation this morning:

Oh, so you made it all the way down here, have you. well, bless you. Here's a little something extra for you to peruse. Click the picture below. Chuckles await.