Rachel Dolezal the Black Hairdresser? The Former Lecturer Now Does Weaves and Braids For Women in a Salon After Losing Her Job in the Race Row

by Cassy Fiano | July 21, 2015 8:57 am

One of the things that had people mystified about Rachel Dolezal was how a white girl with stick straight hair managed to create hair that looked so authentically black. And now that she’s lost her job, she’s using those talents to make money, working as a hairdresser in a salon doing braids and weaves.

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Former NAACP official Rachel Dolezal has resorted to doing weaves and braiding hair three times a week to make ends meet after losing her job lecturing on the history of black hair at a university.

Dolezal, who still insists she is black six weeks after she was publicly outed by her parents as white, did not have her contract with Eastern Washington University renewed after all of the controversy.

Now the ex-African Studies professor is using the styling skills she learned while attending college in Mississippi to put food on the table for her 13-year-old son Franklin at their Spokane-area home.

The weekly appointments are keeping the ‘expert in black hair’ afloat for now, but she is considering a move if the custody agreement she has with Franklin’s father is loosened, Vanity Fair reported.

She said: ‘I’ve got to figure it out before August 1, because my last paycheck was like $1,800 in June.

‘[I lost] friends and the jobs and the work and – oh, my God – so much at the same time.’

The divorced civil rights activist, who sparked a national debate on race, has no black relatives dating back to 1671, an investigation by Daily Mail Online revealed.

Yet the 37-year-old continues to describe herself as black and claims she ‘didn’t deceive anybody’.

Instead she says that it was the public’s definition of race that was to blame for the confusion.

‘It’s taken my entire life to negotiate how to identify,’ she said in her interview with the magazine.

‘You can’t just say in one sentence what is blackness or what is black culture or what makes you who you are.

‘I just feel like I didn’t mislead anybody; I didn’t deceive anybody.

‘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 say I’m black, and there’s a difference in those terms.’

Once again, it is striking how similar the arguments Dolezal makes for how she is actually “black” are to the ones that transgender people make to explain how they are actually the opposite sex. At what point are we going to call a spade a spade, and point out how ridiculous all of this is?

Endnotes:
  1. [Image]: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/dolezal_fake.jpg

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