Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP President of the Spokane, Wash., chapter, told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie during a Nightly News sit-down interview on Tuesday, June 16, that she’s “definitely not white” and there’s “no biological proof” as to who her real parents are.
“When someone asks, 'Are you black?’ — which I actually don’t get asked very often until recently, since a few days ago — I say, ‘Yeah, I am black,’” the controversial 37-year-old activist responded when asked if she’s ever lied about her race.
“I know who raised me,” she went on, referring to her two Caucasian parents who told Megyn Kelly she’s their birth daughter. “I haven’t had a DNA test. There’s been no biological proof that Larry and Ruthanne are my biological parents. I’m not necessarily saying that I can prove they’re not,” she added, “but I don’t know that I can actually prove they are. I mean the birth certificate was issued a month and a half after I’m born. Certainly there were no medical witnesses to my birth. It was in the woods.”
“I definitely am not white,” Dolezal continued. “Nothing about being white describes who I am. So, you know, what’s the word for it? The closest thing that I can come to is if you’re black or white, I’m black. I’m more black than white. On a level of values, lived experience currently. In this moment, that’s the answer. That’s the accurate answer from my truth. But I hope the dialogue continues to push against, ‘What is race? What is ethnicity?’”
Dolezal, who in photos had light blonde hair and pale skin as a child, told Guthrie she’s “experimented” with her hair while living in Mississippi, and that she’s never had any “surgeries or anything like that” to darken her skin.
“I don’t know necessarily if my skin color has changed,” she answered when asked about her appearance. “It depends on the season, right?…Some days I’ll have bronzer or a glow or other days, I don’t.”
An emotional Dolezal concluded the interview explaining that she’s going to “need to do a little regrouping and be able to process the implications now as I move forward.”
Watch the video above.
