Rihanna has always had a knack for making jaw-dropping comments in the press, but this time she’s got fans dropping jaws, turning heads and crying foul over a new interview in which she praised Rachel Dolezal for pretending to be Black.
It’s been some time since we’ve heard anything about Dolezal, the disgraced former NAACP leader who was exposed by her white parents for pretending to be Black. But in a new interview with Vanity Fair, Rihanna speaks about Dolezal’s scandal and praises her for stirring up controversy around Blackness in America.
“I think she was a bit of a hero, because she kind of flipped on society a little bit. Is it such a horrible thing that she pretended to be black? Black is a great thing, and I think she legit changed people’s perspective a bit and woke people up,” Rihanna said.
Yeah, being Black is a great thing, but what’s not great is having a White woman not only appropriate and steal the culture of Black women, but portray her own subjective idea of what a Black woman is. And what also isn’t great is having that same White woman take away opportunities for Black women and chastise Black people who she, ironically, thought weren’t Black enough.
Rihanna might want to prepare herself for a backlash from the Black community. Luckily for her, the interview didn’t just center on Dolezal and she gave fans something else to talk about when she opened up about her previous decision to get back together with her famous ex-boyfriend, Chris Brown, again after their infamous 2009 domestic assault scandal.
Read what Rihanna had to say about Brown, after the cut.
