In Full Color

by Rachel Dolezal

  As for myself, what can I say? It’s been hard. I used to hate going to the grocery store out of fear that some uneducated white person might say something stupid about my hair. Now I hate it because I’m that woman, the one who people still laugh at or despise for “pretending to be Black.” Ever since my outing, I’ve been unemployed and have been rejected for every single job I’ve applied for, many of which I was overqualified for. My name is such poison in the professional world that on October 7, 2016, I legally changed it, adopting a name given to me by a man from the Igbo tribe in Nigeria. He’d reached out to me the year before to say that I was a “twin soul,” born with a white veneer but living as a true Nubian in order to fight for justice for the Black family and culture. I can’t tell you how liberating it felt to shed my old name and the connotation with victimhood, misrepresentation, and tabloid journalism it had come to embody.

  Just as vital to my rebirth has been the support I’ve received from total strangers. During a layover while flying home from the UN’s International Day of the Girl forum in Louisville, I noticed a Black woman with a fair complexion and green eyes glancing over at me from time to time as I ate in a restaurant. When I finished eating and asked for the check, my server informed me that the woman had paid for my meal and left a note behind, telling me to keep my chin up and stay strong. A month later, the owner of a celebrity Black hair store in Dallas, Texas, told me she wanted to sponsor my “next curly look” and put a photo of me wearing her store’s brand of hair on a wall next to photos of Sanaa Lathan, the cast of Empire, and other Black celebrities. (Unfortunately, her gesture wasn’t well received by her clientele, who forced her to remove the picture from the wall as well as from her Instagram account.)

  I’ve also received thousands of letters, emails, and messages online from people telling me how, just like me, they feel trapped somewhere in the confusing gray zone between the Black and white worlds. Some of these people are biracial. Others have said they simply don’t appear or feel entirely Black or white. This marginalized group of people grows larger every day. The United States is experiencing a demographic shift that’s rapidly turning the white population into a minority—U.S. Census Bureau projections predict that by 2045, the majority of U.S. citizens will be from groups that are now classified as “minorities.” Every year families are becoming more culturally mixed and identities of individuals across the spectrum more nuanced.

  The number of children born into interracial relationships is also rapidly increasing. According to a Pew Research Center study, 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States in 2013 were between people of different races, up from a mere .4 percent in 1960, a number that will only keep rising. Yet our society’s level of acceptance of individuals with plural racial identities remains almost unchanged. Unlike most countries in the world, when it comes to the Black–white divide, the United States requires its citizens to choose one or the other. Racial categories in between those two poles aren’t legally or socially recognized, forcing the children of mixed-race couples, caught in the middle, to experience an existential crisis from birth onward. These people are constantly reaching out to me, confirming that I’m not the only one who doesn’t fit neatly into society’s archaic racial categories. They relate to my struggle because they don’t fit into a single box on a census form, but rather somewhere on the spectrum of racial identification. The gray area between Black and white is a very lonely place, and living there can be stressful and exhausting.

  I credit these people for inspiring me to write this book. By sharing my experiences with identity, race, culture, religion, class, trauma, and poverty, I hope to provide comfort to those who are struggling with their identities and assure them that they’re not alone, that they’re not freaks, and that they don’t deserve to be ridiculed or shunned by their friends, families, and communities. It’s for these people, and for everyone impacted by the belief that humans should be divided into racial categories, that I refuse to be quiet about the racial injustice that pervades our culture. I will consider this book a success if it helps even a single person feel better about where they are on their own journey and makes it easier for them to gain acceptance in the world.

  I also wrote this book to set the record straight. I was introduced to the world in the worst possible way, and the story that was told about me wasn’t correct or complete. The public’s view of my character has been based almost entirely on hearsay and lies, and all my attempts to correct them have been forced through the filter of a writer’s pen or a TV host’s microphone. In the process, my precise viewpoint has never been fully articulated, creating even more confusion about who I am and what my intentions are.

  Having experienced the things I have, I feel like my life has become the perfect metaphor for race as a social construction. Because people observe me through the same distorted lens they use to look at the notion of race in general, they’re unable to see my true essence, just like they’re unable to grasp that race is a myth, a charade. Understanding how we have been categorized and why humans feel the need to do so is the first step in dismantling a system that was designed to oppress certain people. The “racial score” still needs to be settled in America. Hopefully once the scales are balanced, the next step on the path to justice will be to do away with racial categories altogether, because without race, racism loses its power.

  Education is another essential component to solving our country’s racial problem. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Jane Elliot, a third-grade teacher from Riceville, Illinois, conducted an exercise with her class in which she designated the brown-eyed students as being superior to the blue-eyed ones. She gave those with brown eyes more food at lunch and more time on the playground, invited them to sit in the front of the classroom, and encouraged them to play only with each other. Meanwhile, she forced the blue-eyed students to sit in the rear of the classroom, didn’t allow them to drink from the same water fountain used by their brown-eyed peers, and reprimanded them for making even the smallest mistakes. By the end of the day, the brown-eyed children were acting as if they truly were superior to their blue-eyed classmates, many of whom had grown noticeably timid and forlorn. The following Monday, Elliott repeated the exercise, but flipped the script, telling the blue-eyed children they were now the superior group. Afterward, some of the children hugged, while others cried. Elliot’s point had been made. In most school districts in the country, it’s mandatory that students be taught state history, but classes about race, how and why the concept was created, and what sort of ramifications that’s had are rarely offered. Imagine what could be achieved if they were. If all students had to take such classes, the racial injustice that exists in our society could be eradicated within a generation or two.

  Race, culture, and gender classes exist in the curricula of some universities but are rarely required for most degrees. These courses introduce students to the root of race and gender constructs and the inequities perpetrated by sexism and racism around the globe. But as our world constantly shifts, new paradigms and vocabulary are needed. As we grow and evolve, we should keep in mind that a single person’s identity, or even the identity of a group of people, isn’t the root problem when it comes to race. How people identify themselves along the racial spectrum and how they are treated based on that identification are only symptomatic of the real problem: racism.

  When it came to sexism, the way people were forced to adopt either a masculine or feminine identity, with no tolerance for those who fell in between those two poles, was one of the root problems. Allowing fluidity in gender identity—including transgender as a legitimate identity category—did not make sexism worse; instead, it improved understanding both between people and within individuals. Likewise, if people are permitted to adopt “transracial,” biracial, triracial, and even nonracial identities, racism will be weakened, not reinforced. If we are to truly achieve equal access, opportunity, and equity for each individual, regardless of gender, class, sexu
al orientation, religion, language, nationality, disability, or cultural identity, we must accept all identities within the human spectrum.

  The only significant regret I have in life is that it took me almost thirty years to give myself permission to name and own the real me. That society has tried to strip me of my identity saddens me, and I look forward to the day when I no longer have to emphasize or suppress different parts of myself to move safely and confidently through the world, a day when I can live as a whole person. Until then, I’m embracing the opportunity to demystify the concept of race and inspire more activism in social justice. After more than three centuries of awkwardness, oppression, and scorn, we’re now living in an age when we finally have the opportunity to solve the many problems emanating from racism and the racial divide. If my story can advance that dialogue and provide some measure of comfort to those who find themselves drifting somewhere between Black and white, or with no category at all, I’ll consider the struggle I’ve endured simply for living as my true self to be entirely worth it.

  Acknowledgments

  THIS BOOK HAS NOT BEEN EASY TO WRITE, nor has the task come at the best time for me, so my heart is filled with immense gratitude for the extraordinary team of people who have contributed their time and energy to support the writing process.

  Special appreciation goes to Ambassador Attallah Shabazz for grounding me and helping me remember who I was amid so much external chaos. Her encouragement to tell my story with confidence and conviction always remained at the forefront of my mind.

  I’m equally grateful to Jackie, Regina, Siobhan, Gavin, Charles, Anna, Morgan, Bob, Shari, and Bianca, whose friendships have uplifted me and given me hope on days when I wasn’t sure if I had anything more to offer the world. Thank you for believing in me and pushing me when I needed it most.

  Thanks also to Albert Wilkerson for embracing me and my sons as part of his family, for contributing such a thoughtful foreword to this book, and for sharing so many valuable life lessons and golden nuggets of wisdom over the years. I will never forget his many acts of kindness, which often spring from his motto: “It’s nice to be nice.”

  Without my agent, Michael Wright, this project might never have come to be. After it seemed like it was never going to get off the ground, he kept the vision for it alive for more than a year with his unwavering optimism, and when it came time to finally begin, he did an excellent job assembling a first-rate team.

  One of the principal members of that team was Storms Reback, who helped mold the giant lump of clay we started with into a sculpture worthy of a museum. Despite the ambitious schedule we were given, he managed to keep pace with me without losing his mind in the process. I couldn’t have met those deadlines or gotten the manuscript into such great shape without him.

  I’m also indebted to everyone at BenBella Books who assisted on this project. Publisher Glenn Yeffeth, deputy publisher Adrienne Lang, senior publishing associate Alicia Kania, senior production editor Jessika Rieck, and art director Sarah Dombrowsky were extremely helpful and encouraging, but I’m particularly grateful to editor-in-chief Leah Wilson, who exhibited a rare form of patience and kindness throughout the process. Her comments and suggestions were always spot-on and invaluable.

  I’d also like to thank Tatsha Robertson for contributing her own special insight to the book. Her style of direct reflection, whether as encouragement or criticism, ultimately made the book much better.

  Finally, I simply couldn’t have written this book without the support of my sons, Franklin, Izaiah, and Langston, and my sister Esther. They were always there to give me hugs, love, and support when I needed it most. They lifted me up whenever I struggled to get words on the page and helped me remember some aspects of my life I had tried hard to forget. I can’t thank them enough for their bravery and encouragement. They are gifts to me, to each other, and to the world. The four of their lives are intertwined, but each of them has their own unique path as well. I promise to always be there for them and to support and assist them whenever they’re ready to write their own stories.

  About the Authors

  RACHEL DOLEŽAL holds an MFA from Howard University. Her scholarly research focus is the intersection of race, gender, and class in the contemporary Black diaspora, with a specific emphasis on Black women in visual culture. She is a licensed intercultural competence and diversity trainer, dedicated to racial and social justice activism. She has worked as an instructor at North Idaho College and Eastern Washington University, where she also served as advisor for the schools’ Black Student Unions, and has guest lectured at Spokane Community College, the University of Idaho, Gonzaga University, and Washington State University.

  Doležal began her activism in Mississippi, where she advocated for equal rights and partnered with community developers, tutoring grade-school children in Black history and art and pioneering African American history courses at a predominantly white university. She is the former director of education at the Human Rights Education Institute in Idaho and has served as a consultant for human rights education and inclusivity in regional public schools. She recently led the Office of Police Ombudsman Commission to promote police accountability and justice in law enforcement in Spokane, Washington, and was the president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP. She is the devoted mother of three sons.

  STORMS REBACK is the author of four books, including The Contractor: How I Landed in a Pakistani Prison and Ignited a Diplomatic Crisis. He lives in Austin, Texas.