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Melissa Harris-Perry Loses Her Mind Over Rachel Dolezal
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Rachel Dolezal: Con Artist Passing as Black Causes Confusion
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Rachel Dolezal resigned from the Spokane NAACP yesterday:
Dolezal's Complete Statement from Facebook
Dear Executive Committee and NAACP Members, It is a true honor to serve in the racial and social justice movement here...
Posted by Spokane NAACP on Monday, June 15, 2015
Dolezal expressed no remorse, nor did she apologize for any deception on her part:
. . . Police brutality, biased curriculum in schools, economic disenfranchisement, health inequities, and a lack of pro-justice political representation are among the concerns at the forefront of the current administration of the Spokane NAACP.
And yet, the dialogue has unexpectedly shifted internationally to my personal identity in the context of defining race and ethnicity.
I have waited in deference while others expressed their feelings, beliefs, confusions and even conclusions - absent the full story.
So she is viewing herself as the victim of the press.
In the last 24 hours Dolezal has also drawn scrutiny to her other activities as a student, artist, college instructor and even columnist for a local Spokane newspaper. And there is probably more where all this came from!
Spokane's The Inlander explains why they hired, and now fired, Rachel Dolezal as a columnist: http://t.co/35b6ijU8vv by editor @jacobhfries— Scott Leadingham (@scottleadingham) June 15, 2015Dolezal has been let go from Eastern Washington University where she was an African Studies Professor (or adjunct instructor - there's some disagreement).
From CBS News
Her biography has also been removed from Eastern Washington University's website. The university said her contract to teach ended this month.
The material below was captured before her biography was scrubbed from the college's website.
This is #RachelDolezal's professor profile at Eastern Washington University: http://t.co/csFySqJxAu pic.twitter.com/K167LmW2hz— Terrell J. Starr (@Russian_Starr) June 12, 2015Rachel is a professor -- of course | http://t.co/BDrEsL8rYV | pic.twitter.com/LrxL1zOiif— Mike Doran (@Doranimated) June 12, 2015While a student at the traditionally black Howard University, Dolezal for discrimination - because she was white!
#RachelDolezal once filed a lawsuit because she felt discriminated against for being white... http://t.co/mhQukUNLX0 pic.twitter.com/AjaMzPIcDa
— Perez Hilton (@PerezHilton) June 16, 2015From the Daily Beast
The Smoking Gun reported Monday.... Dolezal accused the historically black college of improperly blocking her job as a teaching assistant, rejecting her application to be a post-graduate instructor, and denying her scholarship aid. Dolezal also claimed the university removed some of her artwork from a student exhibition because it was “motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students over” her. An appeals court dismissed the complaint in 2004 because it found there was no evidence of discrimination.
The details are rather fascinating, via Smoking Gun
Dolezal, then known as Rachel Moore, named the university and Professor Alfred Smith as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C.’s Superior Court. During the pendency of the civil case, Smith was chairman of Howard’s Department of Art.
According to a Court of Appeals opinion, Dolezal's lawsuit “claimed discrimination based on race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender.” She alleged that Smith and other school officials improperly blocked her appointment to a teaching assistant post, rejected her application for a post-graduate instructorship, and denied her scholarship aid while she was a student.
The court opinion also noted that Dolezal claimed that the university’s decision to remove some of her artworks from a February 2001 student exhibition was “motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students over” her.
As detailed in the court opinion, Dolezal’s lawsuit contended that Howard was “permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult.”
Judge Zoe Bush dismissed Dolezal’s complaint in February 2004, 18 months after the lawsuit was filed and Dolezal was deposed on several occasions. Bush found no evidence that Dolezal was discriminated on the basis of race or other factors. The D.C. Court of Appeals subsequently affirmed Bush’s decision.
Following the dismissal of Dolezal’s lawsuit (and the Court of Appeals decision), she was ordered to reimburse Howard for a “Bill of Costs” totaling $2728.50. During the case, she was also ordered to pay the university nearly $1000 in connection with an “obstructive and vexatious” court filing that sought to improperly delay her examination by an independent doctor.
It's fascinating that Dolezal's art was the sticking point. It has now come to light that Dolezal copied (try plagiarized) a famous painting by British artist J.M.W. Turner called "The Slave Ship" and called it her own original work. In her catalog only speaks of her own interpretation of the scene. It's audacious!
Rachel Dolezal's painting The Shape of Our Kind is a near duplicate of J.M.W. Turner's 1840 The Slave Ship. pic.twitter.com/DGC7GkkPiu— Jolie Adams (@Jolieishere) June 15, 2015This photo of Dolezal in front of the plagiarized painting as published in TheEasternerOnline bears the caption:
Rachel Dolezal, an EWU Professor, sits on a couch at her home in front of an original painting she created. Dolezal obtained her master's in fine arts at Howard University.
Dolezal tried to fill in some of the blanks in her "full story" by giving an interview to NBC's TODAY Show with Matt Lauer. But again there are more questions than answers as Dolezal dodged the basic question of why she has lied about her racial identity.
From TODAY
"I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon, and black curly hair," she told Lauer. But she insisted she never deceived anyone as numerous critics have suggested.
"I do take exception to that because it's a little more complex than me identifying as black or answering a question of, are you black or white?" she said.
. . . "As much as this discussion has somewhat been at my expense recently, and in a very sort of viciously inhumane way come out of the woodwork, the discussion is really about what it is to be human," she said.
A woman who spray-tans, wears Afro wigs, and lies about havin a Black "dad" just sat on tv & said her parents are "whitewashing" her.
— Rusty Redenbacher (@rustymk2) June 16, 2015From Washington Post
“I definitely am not white,” Dolezal told NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie in an excerpt of the interview which will air on “Nightly News.” “Nothing about being white describes who I am.”
. . . “I identify as black,” Dolezal told NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday morning. “I did feel that, at some point, I would need to address the complexity of my identity.”
In a series of interviews with the network — a first since she was thrust into the national spotlight — the 37-year-old Dolezal was challenged about her race and the accusations that she had been deceptive for years.
Dolezal told Guthrie: “I am more black than I am white.”
