No Job, No Home. What’s next for the ‘Oyinbo African? White civil rights activist, Rachel Dolezal, caught in black identity lie, changes her name to African phrase that means ‘gift of God’
How did Rachel Dolezal go from suing a university for discriminating against her because she was white, to morphing into a totally Black identity?
Is she compounding her initial fraud by trying to cash in on her notoriety?
Rachel Dolezal changes her name to a Pan African complex from West, Central and East loosely translated to ‘The bold, handsome gift of God’
Insists she did no wrong two years after self identity scandal
Set to release memoir of her journey from white to Black[ness]
Claims she’s homeless, living off foodstamps, can’t find a job and no one’s ready to lend a hand because she offended both sides
The question remains , will Dolezal finally find acceptance in her preferred community?
Dolezal is pictured here, far right, during a rally in downtown Spokane, Washington, said in an interview said “…I don’t have any regrets about how I identify”
Court documents in Spokane, Washington show that the 39-year-old white former NAACP leader filed to change her name to ‘Nkechi Amare Diallo’.
Nkechi, short for Nkechinyere meaning “This is my gift from God ” or “gift of God” comes from the Igbo tribe in the Eastern parts of Nigeria. Amare or the ‘handsome’ commonly from the horn of East Africa and Diallo [Jalloh],“the bold one” a name more common among the Fula tribe in the West and Sahelian African countries of Guinea, Senegal, Mali and Sierra Leone, to name just a few.
Dolezal tweeted Wednesday afternoon that “the story behind my name change will be in my book.” The introduction of the name nom de guerre appeared four months ago in a Change.org petition posted under the name Nkechi Diallo which urged TED Talks to post her April 2016 presentation online.
Rachel Dolezal in photo as an 18 years old, did not start identifying as black until 2011 according to her adopted brother who is black himself
The page makes no mention that Dolezal and Diallo are the same woman. Thirty-two people signed the petition, and TED Talks commented on Monday that her speech had been available on their website since November.
Dolezal stepped down in June 2015 from her role in the Spokane NAACP chapter after her birth parents revealed that she is white.
The Guardian reports that it all unraveled for the outspoken and respected for her civil rights activist and mother-or-two, in 2015. She was then branch president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] and chair of Spokane’s police ombudsman commission.
She was also an instructor at Eastern Washington University when a local TV news crew arrived one afternoon to interview her,ostensibly about hate crimes. However, it veered when the reporter asked: “Are you African American?”
Her response: “I don’t understand the question.” The reporter pressed, “Are your parents white?” The subject turned from the camera and fled.Footage of the confrontation flew around the world. Dolezal’s white parents released photographs of their daughter as a blonde white child, and appeared on TV to denounce her as a fraud; she had been living a lie, pretending to be black, when she was no more African American than they were.
Rachel ‘ Nkechi Diallo’ Dolezal, who stepped down from the local Spokane NAACP chapter, claims she hasn’t been able to find work since then, despite applying for more than 100 jobs
What had she been thinking?
When it emerged that she had once sued a university for discriminating against her because she was white, Dolezal’s notoriety was complete.
She has had to live with the consequences, but how is Dolezal dealing with the fallout?
One of the consequences for the former NAACP chapter president is that she is now claiming indigency, having lost her job as an adjunct instructor at Eastern Washington University. Dolezal said she hasn’t been able to find work since then, despite applying for more than 100 jobs.
Rachel Dolezal’s biological parents Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal. After keeping out of the limelight for most of her life, her parents reportedly blew her cover revealing the Dolezal is actually a white woman posing as a black woman
“Right now the only place I feel understood and completely accepted is with my kids and my sister,” said the former college instructor who allegedly, is living on food stamps and claims she can’t afford her rent.
“The narrative was that I’d offended both communities in an unforgivable way, so anybody who gave me a dime would be contributing to wrong and oppression and bad things. To a liar and fraud and a con,” she told The Guardian.
Rachel Dolezal seen plugging her book on NBC’s TODAY show resigned from her position as Spokane, Wash.’s NAACP chapter president in June, 2015
Her memoir, “In Full Color,” is due out in March.
Dolezal is adamant she has no intention of apologizing for her actions.
“I’m not going to stoop and apologize and grovel and feel bad about it. I would just be going back to when I was little, and had to be what everybody else told me I should be, to make them happy,” she said in her interview with the Guardian.
“The times that I tried to explain more, I wasn’t understood more. Nobody wanted to hear, ‘I’m pan-African, pro-black, bisexual, an artist, mother and educator.’ People would just be like, ‘Huh? What? What are you talking about?’ So I felt like by not talking about my biological ancestry, I gave people the opportunity to relate to me as an individual, not part of a group.”
Dolezal’s memoir [cover image] which debuted on Amazon last year raised a storm Black literary circles. Her only self-description says “In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World,” will address the “path that led her from being a child of white evangelical parents to a NAACP chapter president and respected educator and activist who identified as black.”
However many Black writers feel she ids trying to cash in on a fraud she perpetrated in misidentifying her race.
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