US civil rights activist quits after race dispute
A US civil rights activist campaigning for the rights of African Americans has resigned, just days after her parents said she is a white woman posing as black.
Rachel Dolezal, who served as president of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the country's oldest and largest civil rights organisation, said the controversy over her race had shifted dialogue away from key social and political issues.
"It is with complete allegiance to the cause of racial and social justice and the NAACP that I step aside from the presidency and pass the baton to my vice president, Naima Quarles-Burnley," Dolezal said in a statement on the NAACP Spokane chapter's Facebook page on Monday.
Dolezal, 37, came under intense scrutiny last week after a white couple who identified themselves as her biological parents came forward to say she had misrepresented herself as black.
They told media that their daughter is white with a trace of Native American heritage. They produced photos of her as a girl with fair skin and straight blond hair. According to BBC news US race activist Rachel Dolezal in her own words said "I identify as black", despite claims that she is actually white.
Ms Dolezal resigned on Monday.Speaking to NBC, she said that from the age of five she "was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon".She added that she "takes exception" to suggestions she had deceived people.
"This is not some freak-show, Birth of a Nation blackface performance," she told NBC's Matt Lauer. "This is on a real connected level how I've had to go there with the experience."
Hours beforehand, her mother Rutheanne Dolezal told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme that her daughter had become "disconnected from reality".
Discrimination claims
Al Jezeera news has reported that the image that has emerged of Dolezal is of a woman who was raised in a home with adopted black siblings, enrolled at historically black Howard University and later sued the Washington, DC school on grounds it discriminated against her because she was white.
Dolezal initially dismissed the controversy, saying it arose from a legal dispute that has divided the family, and repeatedly sidestepped questions about her race.
"That question is not as easy as it seems," she said. "There's a lot of complexities." Today on BBC news she was further quoted saying that either black or white she will continue to fight as a civil activist.
Rachel Dolezal, who served as president of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the country's oldest and largest civil rights organisation, said the controversy over her race had shifted dialogue away from key social and political issues.
"It is with complete allegiance to the cause of racial and social justice and the NAACP that I step aside from the presidency and pass the baton to my vice president, Naima Quarles-Burnley," Dolezal said in a statement on the NAACP Spokane chapter's Facebook page on Monday.
Dolezal, 37, came under intense scrutiny last week after a white couple who identified themselves as her biological parents came forward to say she had misrepresented herself as black.
They told media that their daughter is white with a trace of Native American heritage. They produced photos of her as a girl with fair skin and straight blond hair. According to BBC news US race activist Rachel Dolezal in her own words said "I identify as black", despite claims that she is actually white.
Ms Dolezal resigned on Monday.Speaking to NBC, she said that from the age of five she "was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon".She added that she "takes exception" to suggestions she had deceived people.
"This is not some freak-show, Birth of a Nation blackface performance," she told NBC's Matt Lauer. "This is on a real connected level how I've had to go there with the experience."
Hours beforehand, her mother Rutheanne Dolezal told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme that her daughter had become "disconnected from reality".
Discrimination claims
Al Jezeera news has reported that the image that has emerged of Dolezal is of a woman who was raised in a home with adopted black siblings, enrolled at historically black Howard University and later sued the Washington, DC school on grounds it discriminated against her because she was white.
Dolezal initially dismissed the controversy, saying it arose from a legal dispute that has divided the family, and repeatedly sidestepped questions about her race.
"That question is not as easy as it seems," she said. "There's a lot of complexities." Today on BBC news she was further quoted saying that either black or white she will continue to fight as a civil activist.