Rachel Dolezal has legally changed her name to a West African moniker after pretending to be black. Rachel Dolezal previously made headlines when she
Rachel Dolezal has legally changed her name to a West African moniker after pretending to be black. Rachel Dolezal previously made headlines when she was outed as white by her own parents after pretending to be black. The former leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), stepped down from the position, when the scandal hit.
She was outed in June 2015 when her parents, Larry and Ruthanne, revealed she was not actually black. And now it seems the former professor and columnist is sticking to her guns by legally changing her name to a Nigerian name. The 39 year old filed to legally change her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo in October in a Washington court.
While Nkechi is short for Nkechinyere in the Nigerian language of Igbo, and translates to ‘gift of god’, her chosen last name, Diallo, comes from the Fula people of West Africa and means ‘bold’.
“I’m not going to stoop and apologise and grovel and feel bad about it,” she said.
“I would just be going back to when I was little, and had to be what everybody else told me I should be, to make them happy.
The story made international headlines and Dolezal eventually admitted she was biologically born white to white parents and compared herself to Caitlyn Jenner, claiming race is not coded in your DNA. She also lost her job as a part-time professor of Africana Studies at Eastern Washington University because of the ordeal, and says she hasn’t been able to get work since.
She said she’s applied for more than 100 jobs, but not a single place will hire her. The only offers that have come her way have been for reality television and porn. She now relies on food stamps to feed her family and has been receiving help from a friend to cover her. Next month she expects to be homeless.
She added her memoir titled ‘In Full Colour’ due out in March, was turned down by 30 publishing houses before anyone would be willing to print it.
“The narrative was that I’d offended both communities in an unforgivable way, so anybody who gave me a dime would be contributing to wrong and oppression and bad things,” she said.
Dolezal said she wrote her book not only to tell her side of the story, but to also open up this dialogue about race and identity, and to just encourage people to be exactly who they are. When questioned about her race, Dolezal would just tell people that she was mixed, but she doesn’t feel as though she was lying.
She also noted that she’d never consider going back to ‘being white’.
“No, this is still home to me,” Dolezal said. “I didn’t feel like I’m ever going to be hurt so much that I somehow leave who I am, because I’m me. It really is who I am. It’s not a choice.”
