Reasons why Rachel Dolezal pretended to be black
The parents of Rachel Dolezal adopted four children when she was a teenager; two of the children were black. Rachel Dolezal took the all the adopted children as her siblings and her interactions with them made her get interested with the black people (Sieczkowski, 2015). He parents always interacted with many other people with the black origin. This close interaction of her parents with the black origin and the adoption of the black children by her parents could have fueled her change of racial perception. She also became actively involved in the activities of a project for community development that was known to be a racial reconciliation project.
This development project influenced her change of racial identity since through the project she was able to see that the whites and the black freely interacted and lived together. This interaction with the whites and the blacks in her family and at the development project made her have a feeling that there is no big deal in identifying herself as a white. The adoption of the two black children by her parents was the turning point in her racial and ethnic identity. The blame cannot be entirely on her because she changed her identity at a younger age. One could possibly say that the decision was driven by ignorance as a child as she was not aware of the consequences that came along with the faking of her identity.
The racial reconciliation project also escalated the change of her identity since she could see the black and the white people live together and freely interacted. The environment around her was purely a mixture of the white and the black race; these might be the reasons for her change of identity.
Works cited:
Sieczkowski, C. (2015) NAACP Leader Rachel Dolezal Allegedly Faked Being A Black Woman For Years, huffepost black voice website. Retreived from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/12/naacp-rachel-dolezal-faked-being- black_n_7568856.html on 25th, February 2016.
