It’s 9 a.m. in Tucson, Arizona, and Rachel Dolezal is sitting across from me in a navy-blue dress, telling me about the local Palo Verde trees, and how they evolved green trunks to sustain themselves in the dry Arizona desert.
“Resilient,” she remarks with a slight chuckle that makes it clear to me that she’s not just talking about the trees.
Eleven years ago, Dolezal was serving as president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter in Spokane, Washington, when a local reporter asked if she was black. She refused to answer the question, and a video of the exchange went viral. Eventually, Dolezal acknowledged that she had been born to white parents, but identified as black anyway. What followed was an apocalyptic storm of criticism and ridicule that cemented her position as one of the most famous cancel-culture victims of the 2010s and made her name synonymous with race fakery. In fact, if you type her name into Google News right now, you’ll find headlines not about her but about the woman dubbed “Palestinian Rachel Dolezal” (more on her later).
But despite all of this, the weaves and braids stayed on. Dolezal never backed down, apologized, or started self-identifying as white. She carried on, sporadically posting life updates on social media. Recently, after news broke that she has retrained to be a sex therapist, I remarked on X that she is “the ultimate individual.”
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