Rachel Dolezal

“As long as I can remember, I saw myself as black. I was socially conditioned to discard that. It was an all-white town. I was very unhappy. I felt like I was constantly self-sabotaging in order to conform to religion, culture dynamics. I was censoring myself. I was shutting down inside.”

“I think that, in America, even though race is a social construct, I mean, we say this in theory, but I think a lot of people don't believe that it really is. And so it's still a very racialized society.”

“The system of racial classification is fiction, and we need to thoughtfully evaluate whether perpetuating it rigidly or allowing fluidity across the spectrum best supports human rights and social justice.”

“I certainly don't stay out of the sun, and I also don't, as some of my critics have said, put on blackface as a performance.”

“I do wish I could have given myself permission to really name and own the me of me earlier in life.”

“I'm this generic, ambiguous scapegoat for white people to call me a race traitor and take out their hostility on. And I'm a target for anger and pain about white people from the black community. It's like I am the worst of all these worlds.”

“I was presented as a con and a fraud and a liar. I think some of the treatment was pretty cruel.”

“I am part of the pan-African diaspora.”

“I really feel like there have been moments of some level of creative nonfiction. I have kind of had to explain or justify some of the timeline and logistics of my life in a way that made sense to others.”

“I definitely feel like, in America, even though race is a social construct... there's still a line drawn in the sand; there still are sides. Politically, there's a black side and a white side, and I stand unapologetically on the black side.”

“My life is not a sound bite.”

“I've never been fully transparent or an open book, even to those you'd call close friends.”

“I stand on the black side of issues, philosophically, politically, socially, and for me to not check that box, I felt like, would be some sort of betrayal of not only who I am but also the community I affiliate with.”

“There's no such thing as racial, non-white supremacy.”

“I really just prefer to be exactly who I am, and black is really the closest race and cultural category that represents the essence of who I am.”

“What I believe about race is that race is not real. It's not a biological reality. It's a hierarchical system that was created to leverage power and privilege between different groups of people.”

“I'm bisexual. And so, you know, I've dated men and women.”

“Hopefully, even if I am judged or there's confusion, anger, about how I identify, I hope that people can understand that family is fluid.”

“About five years old, I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon and, you know, the black curly hair. That's how I was portraying myself.”

“I identify as black.”