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  • Resigns in Disgrace: Rachel Dolezal Quits NAACP

    06.15.2015 | News | |

    Apparently, white is not the New Black.

    That’s the story that Rachel Dolezal, former president of the Spokane NAACP, was trying to stick to.

    After being outed by her parents as a white woman, Dolezal had planned to explain herself at the next regular NAACP meeting. But that meeting had been postponed.

    “Due to the need to continue discussion with regional and national NAACP leaders, tomorrow’s meeting is postponed and will be rescheduled for a later date. We appreciate your patience and understanding at this time,” Dolezal wrote to her NAACP members on Sunday, according to The Spokesman-Review.

    Then a petition calling for Dolezal’s resignation was launched and a protest rally was being organized against her.

    “If I find out that you have not been completely honest with me and that you lied just to get close to me, yes I feel betrayed,” said Kitara Johnson, a Spokane NAACP member. “How can you sweep all of this under the rug without an apology, without an acknowledgment that people were hurt?”

    “One’s racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard for NAACP leadership,” said National NAACP spokeswoman Michelle Nealy. “NAACP Spokane Washington Branch President Rachel Dolezal is enduring a legal issue with her family, and we respect her privacy in this matter.”

    Still, most people weren’t willing to give Dolezal a pass for her repeated lies.

    “Ethically I don’t really know how they can say she can be an effective leader when she has lied to an entire community,” said Spokane resident Freda Gandy, executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center. “The NAACP, in my opinion, feels like she only needs to answer to them. She forfeited that right when she became a community leader. That means she answers to all of us, me and you.”

    Finally, Rachel Dolezal resigned as president of the Spokane NAACP Monday.

    “In the eye of this current storm, I can see that a separation of family and organizational outcomes is in the best interest of the NAACP,” Dolezal said in a statement posted to the organization’s Facebook page. “It is with complete allegiance to the cause of racial and social justice and the NAACP that I step aside from the presidency and pass the baton to my Vice President, Naima Quarles-Burnley.”

    Here’s to another week of a stupid story that only serves as a sideshow deflecting from things that actually matter.


    Jerome Hudson

    Managing Editor

    Jerome Hudson has written for numerous national outlets, including The Hill, National Review, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and was recognized as one of Florida’s emerging stars, having been included in the list “25 Under 30: Florida’s Rising Young Political Class.” Hudson is a Savannah, Ga. native who currently resides in Florida.

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