Rachel Dolezal’s brother breaks silence
If you darken your skin, perm your hair, become a baby mama, and have a bad attitude can you pass for a Black woman? For Rachel Dolezal this insulting stereotype worked for her as she assimilated into the Black community in Spokane, Washington. A person might wonder whether Dolezal was deceptive, delusional or just plain crazy. According to her adopted brother, who she claimed was her biological son; it’s a little bit of all three. Ezra Dolezal, 22, gave an in-depth interview to the media recently and made a few startling statements about his adopted sister.
According to Ezra, in 2012 his sister decided to reinvent herself and break all ties with her life and family in Montana.“She wanted to make a new life for herself but she took it to the ultimate extreme. Not only did she move out to Spokane, but she created a whole new identity for herself,” he said.
That new life in Spokane also entailed creating a new racial identity. “She just told me, over here, I’m going to be considered Black, and I have a Black father. Don’t blow my cover,” Ezra said.
Ezra went along with the deception and never questioned his sister, but he did notice strange things like Black hair care products in the house. “My younger sister Esther is fully African-American and Rachel used to do her hair a lot. She really enjoyed it, so she already knew a lot about hair products and started applying them to herself.” stated Ezra. This included ‘perming’ her naturally straight blonde hair into Black hairstyles. But Rachel Dolezal did not stop at the hair, she also started using Black cosmetic products to darken her features; then suddenly she began to officially identify herself as a Black person according to Ezra. “She puts dark makeup on her face and says she black. It’s basically blackface”
Did her experience at Howard University have an effect on her?
Ezra believes that Rachel Dolezal’s behavior can be traced back to his sister’s attendance at Howard University. As a White student on the majority Black campus she was a minority and because she chose African American art as her focus, she stuck out as a student. Ezra states that his sister encountered what amounted to reverse racism on campus and she felt that she was being treated differently by both students and faculty.
“Because of her work in African American art, they thought she was a Black student during her application, but they ended up with a White person,” stated Ezra.
This social rejection, oddly enough, caused her to not dislike Black people, but to hate White people for making Black people not accept her.
Yes, it’s confusing. In her delusional, educated mind, only she understood the impact of White supremacy and racism on Black people. As such, she saw her inability to be accepted by Black people on campus a direct result of the impact of White racism. So she hated White people for creating the discriminatory behavior on campus. It was then that her brother Ezra stated that Rachel started being “hateful to white people.”
Rachel Dolezal then went on to invent a life of oppression and rejection because she was a Black woman and it worked. She has stated that she was physically abused and grew up in poverty in Montana and rural Mississippi. Despised by White people because of her Black skin and social activism, she claimed to be the target of multiple threats and hate mail. This invented story gave her legitimacy and access to the Black community and allowed her to become the head of the Spokane NAACP.
