I don't believe in reverse racism. I really don't.
Rachel Dolezal
Blackness better defines who I am philosophically and socially than whiteness does.
I did work and bought all my own clothes and shoes since I was 9 years old. That's not a typical American childhood life.
I am part of the pan-African diaspora.
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.
I think there's definitely a stereotype of white privilege, and that stereotype gets expanded to mean rich, not oppressed, not suffering, et cetera. And yes, it's a misperception.
I have a huge issue with blackface.
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.
My life is not a sound bite.
I was not born in a teepee - that I know of. I actually don't know where I was born.
In order to really move toward what people really think of as some sort of Utopian post-racial society or somehow to really challenge the racial hierarchy, we're going to have to allow some fluidity.
From a very young age, I felt a spiritual, visceral, instinctual connection with 'black is beautiful.' Just the black experience and wanting to celebrate that. And I didn't know how to articulate that as a young child.
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.
I'm more black than I am white. That's the accurate answer from my truth.
Any man can be a father; not any man can be a dad.
I definitely am not white.
Everybody's life matters. But that's why we have to say black lives matter, because the highest disproportionality, police brutality, disenfranchisement, education disproportionality in school discipline, curriculum, misrepresentation, all of this.
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.
Nothing about being white describes who I am.
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.
I identify as black.
If somebody has hope, don't take that away from them, because maybe that's all they have.
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.
I would pretend to be a dark-skinned princess in the Sahara Desert or one of the Bantu women living in the Congo... imagining I was a different person living in a different place was one of the few ways... that I could escape the oppressive environment I was raised in.
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 wish Americans understood that race is a social construct, even if we don't want it to be.
In the Dolezal family, you couldn't always count on your parents to keep you safe.
I'm bisexual. And so, you know, I've dated men and women.
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 felt very isolated with my identity virtually my entire life, that nobody really got it and that I didn't really have the personal agency to express it.
It's a painful thing to talk about my childhood. I kind of don't talk about it much.
There's no such thing as racial, non-white supremacy.
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.
I was presented as a con and a fraud and a liar. I think some of the treatment was pretty cruel.
I don't think you can do something wrong with your identity if you're living in your authenticity.
People didn't seem able to consider that maybe both were true. OK, I was born to white parents, but maybe I had an authentic black identity.
I want to provide for my kids.
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.
Overall, my life has been one of survival, and the decisions that I have made along the way, including my identification, have been to survive.
I think that it is too common for white feminists to say, 'We want some diversity. Come join our movement about gender, but we want you to check the class and race at the door.' And you can't undo that braid of race, class, and gender: all three intersect with each other, so it's important for more education to be done about that.
If people feel misled or deceived, then sorry that they feel that way, but I believe that's more due to their definition and construct of race in their own minds than it is to my integrity or honesty, because I wouldn't say I'm African American, but I would say I'm black, and there's a difference in those terms.
You can't just say in one sentence what is blackness or what is black culture or what makes you who you are.
I do wish I could have given myself permission to really name and own the me of me earlier in life.
Race is such a contentious issue because of the painful history of racism. Race didn't create racism, but racism created race.
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.
My husband didn't want me to wear any black hairstyles. Nicole Kidman was his standard of beauty.
I think some people feel that if you question the reality of race, you're questioning racism; you're saying racism isn't real. Racism is real because people actually believe race is real. We'd have to really let go of the 500-year-old idea of race as a worldview in order to undo racism.
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.
Have I had experiences by other people identifying me as black and behaving towards me as black? Yes. Just for as long as maybe somebody who was born categorised as black? No.
I've never been fully transparent or an open book, even to those you'd call close friends.
