*Rachel Dolezal’s racial situation goes deeper than black and white as her brother Ezra opened up about seeing his adopted sister’s identity transition firsthand.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Ezra recalled a warning Rachel gave him while she geared up to begin life anew in Spokane, Washington in 2012.
“She just told me, ‘Over here, I’m going to be considered black, and I have a black father. Don’t blow my cover,’” Ezra told BuzzFeed News, adding that Rachel told him to tell people that he and her other adopted brother were her “blood brothers.”
As for why Rachel wanted to change her identity, Ezra said she never gave him “any logical explanation.” Although he never confronted Rachel about the identity switch, Ezra saw that something was up when she distanced herself from her parents Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal, and left their home in Montana.
“She wanted to make a new life for herself but she took it to the ultimate extreme,” he said. “Not only did she move out to Spokane, but she created a whole new identity for herself.”
It was six years ago when Ezra came across Rachel’s use of African-American hair products when visiting her in Spokane.
“My younger sister Esther is fully African-American and Rachel used to do her hair a lot. She really enjoyed it, so she already knew a lot about hair products and started applying them to herself,” Ezra said.
From there, Ezra stated how Rachel started perming her hair, which was naturally straight and blonde as well as applying makeup to her face to make her appear “darker and darker” in 2011, a year before she issued her warning about blowing her cover.
According to Ezra, Rachel’s efforts to identify herself as a black woman may have come from racism she experienced when she was a student at Howard University. In 2002, she graduated from the school with a master’s degree in fine art. Nevertheless, the achievement came amid complaints she had about being treated poorly as one of a few white students on the predominately black campus
“She used to tell us that teachers treated her differently than other people and a lot of them acted like they didn’t want her there,” Ezra stated “Because of her work in African-American art, they thought she was a black student during her application, but they ended up with a white person.”
As a result of the negative treatment, Ezra said Rachel became angry and began to be “hateful to white people.”
“It’s like what psychologists call self-hating,” he told BuzzFeed. “She had no reason not to like herself being white. She was an awesome artist and she could have accomplished everything she did, if she had stayed exactly the same.”
Rachel’s hatred of white people resulted in her brainwashing their other adopted brother, Izaiah, into hating white people, Ezra said while pointing out that fanned the flames further by telling Izaiah that their parents were racist. As it turned out, Rachel obtained legal custody of Izaiah in 2010. As it stands now, she calls Izaiah, who is now 21, her birth son.
Despite serving as the president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP and a city police oversight commissioner. Rachel’s past identity came to light after her parents revealed she is actually white to local media, in addition to mentioning her situation with Izaiah. On Friday (June 12), the NAACP issued a statement supporting Rachel as well as backing her record of advocacy and service, particularly as president of the local Spokane chapter.
According to reports, Rachel has claimed her parents were abusive to her and her siblings, something Ezra disputes.
“She was treated really well as a child,” he said, adding, “I think I would know if I was abused growing up, and I definitely wasn’t,” he said while conflicting Rachel’s claim of hunting with bow and arrows while living in South Africa. Although he lived in South Africa with his parents and other siblings, Ezra told BuzzFeed that Rachel actually lived in Virginia and never visited the family outside the U.S.
While they may have had frequent talks in the past, things have definitely changed as Ezra stated that he doesn’t believe anything Rachel has said or done over the past few years. Regarding her claims of being diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2006 and receiving hate mail and being the target of racial attacks, Ezra isn’t buying any of it.
With all this, Ezra sees Rachel’s claim of identifying with the struggle of black people as a “slap in the face” to them, considering she grew as a white girl with a good education who lived in a nice house.
“She puts dark makeup on her face and says she’s black,” he expressed to TheWrap. “It’s basically blackface.”
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