Where is Rachel Dolezal now? White woman who claimed to be Black says she 'canceled her white privilege'
Rachel Anne Dolezal, also known as Nkechi Amare Diallo, the former college instructor and activist notorious for claiming she was a Black woman, despite having been born to white parents, will now appear in a new documentary called ‘Subjects of Desire’. Directed by Jennifer Holness, the documentary is scheduled to premiere at SXSW. The film reportedly focuses on “Black beauty, societal pressures in today’s culture, and stereotypes that Black women have been pigeonholed into for decades”.
Speaking to the Daily Beast, Holness said that her film also examines appropriation and beauty standards shifting to include what’s commonly associated with Black features, such as curvy bodies and full lips, and that Dolezal had to be included. “It wasn’t a commercial thought,” she said. “It wasn’t like I thought, ‘Oh my God if I put her in, it’ll be controversial!’ No, not at all. I’m doing a film on Black women and beauty and this is the first time that I’ve come across a white woman pretending to be Black for 10 years when there wasn’t a massive financial benefit."
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“The standard of beauty historically has been white and that has been protected and upheld, so as someone who has that standard, she’s blonde with freckles and green eyes and stepped away from that, there’s something there.”
What is Rachel Dolezal up to now?
As per the Daily Beast, Dolezal has said in the documentary that since 2015, when she was first outed by her parents as White, she has faced “just shaming and ridicule”. She said, “I’ve been called an insult to white women and an insult to Black women. White women are angry because I did what they never would do and went further like I put 110. I didn’t just be that white ally and do a little bit, I canceled my white privilege. I canceled my hair. For Black women, I feel like it’s a reaction to pain. It’s like a trigger to post-traumatic stress.”
“When it comes to white men, that’s the group that I am the most scared of on a level of threat because that’s mostly the white supremacy folks,” she said. She added that she now makes a living from her hair-braiding business. She was a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter president in Spokane, Washington. But being 'outed' as a White person changed all that.
SUBJECTS OF DESIRE takes a rather scattergun approach in deconstructing the images of Black women, and while it certainly examines a range of worthy topics, it’s not as slickly executed as I’d hoped. Also, giving repeated airtime to Rachel Dolezal....ain’t it. #SXSW pic.twitter.com/C3tXlGFJrA
— Chey@SXSW (@_CheySays) March 17, 2021
She also said in the documentary how her first husband, a Black man named Kevin Moore whom she married in 2000, tried to force her into a “white mold,” which caused her spirit to be “repressed.” “He would make comments about how no white woman has that kind of butt, you need to get a respectable white butt,” she said.
Back in 2015, post the revelation around her racial identity, Dolezal had said, “It’s not a costume. I don’t know spiritually and metaphysically how this goes, but I do know that from my earliest memories I have awareness and connection with the Black experience, and that’s never left me. It’s not something that I can put on and take off anymore. Like I said, I’ve had my years of confusion and wondering who I really [was] and why and how do I live my life and make sense of it all, but I’m not confused about that any longer. I think the world might be -- but I’m not.”
