Rachel Dolezal: “Race Didn’t Create Racism, Racism Created Race”

Rachel Dolezal is back, and she’s still not black, if you insist on dividing people into different “races” or whatever.

Dolezal made a name for herself last year by pretending to be black, becoming a civil rights activist with the NAACP and then being exposed as being a blonde white women. When asked directly by a reporter, “Are you white?”, she famously stammered “I don’t understand the question” before walking off camera.

In her latest appearance on the Today Show, Dolezal proved that not much has changed between then and now. After looking back on the last year and talking about how it was difficult to be out in public because people take pictures of her, she was asked if she had any regrets about deceiving people about her racial background.

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to with that,” she said awkwardly, “but definitely, I don’t have any regrets about how I identify. I’m still me, and nothing about that has changed.”

She went on to say that she wished she’d “given myself permission to really name and own the ‘me’ of me earlier in life. It took me almost 30 years to get there. But certainly, I feel like it’s a complex issue. How do you sum up a whole life of coming into who you are in a soundbite?”

If all of that sounds kind of vague and confusing, don’t worry — she has a book and a TED Talk on the way that will explain everything, including her idea that “race didn’t create racism, but racism created race,” and what even is race anyway? Aren’t we all part of the human race?

Oh boy.

The internet, freshly reminded that Dolezal still exists, is responding the way you might expect:

Our host Shira Lazar has more: