[youtube yBPZ_iEPhOk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBPZ_iEPhOk youtube]

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Okay so…I didn't see her interview this morning because I was at work. But I appreciate being able to see the video and read the text.

Btw- Thanks for posting the text DJ.

Frankly, the thing I find most striking about her is this -.at least for now, on the issue of how she identifies herself, she's very clear: "I identify as Black." She's not backing down.

No matter how uncomfortable it may make anyone feel, she's not backing down.

She identifies as Black,

I agree with the following sentiment- had she simply "slunk off into obscurity it would have paved the way for critics to simply claim that she was a white person trying to gain an advantage from the system by intentionally lying about being black, putting her in the *blackface,* Birth of a Nation category" which would make it easier to dismiss her.

Of course, regardless of how many interviews she does, some people will dismiss her anyway. And I certainly understand. She is after-all a fraud.

However, I also feel she is affected most by some serious mental health issues that are rooted in her childhood. I'm not sure how old she was when her parents adopted 4 Black children(?)

At any rate, to me, her story seems to be a very complex one.

In her first interview since being accused of misrepresenting her racial background and stepping down as an N.A.A.C.P. official, Rachel A. Dolezal did not back down on Tuesday, stating “I identify as black,” although she comes from a white family.

When Matt Lauer of NBC’s “Today” show asked, “When did you start deceiving people,” Ms. Dolezal did not concede that she had done so.

“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.

She said her identification with black people went back as far as when she was 5 years old. “I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon, and the black curly hair,” she said.

My recent post TGIF: The Truth About Racism

Btw Tim Wise is a white man

And I suspect she didn’t have the patience for the messiness, but armed with righteous indignation at the society around her, and perhaps the one in which she had been raised out west, she opted to cut out the middle man. To hell with white allyship (or as my friends and colleagues Lisa Albrecht and Jesse Villalobos are calling it, “followership”), to hell with working with others; rather, she opted to simply become black, to speak for and as those others.

It was her way of obtaining the authenticity to which she perhaps felt entitled just because of her sensibilities, and which she felt had been denied her by those whose approval she sought. It is a more extreme version, to be sure, but of a piece with those white folks who think dabbling in eastern religion makes us more spiritual, that donning beads and dream catchers in our rear-view mirrors makes us indigenous, or that blaring the loudest, brashest hip-hop beats in our stale suburbs renders us hard and street and real, in some way that isn’t possible within the confines of white normativity.”