In Full Color Read online

  Praise for In Full Color

  “Finally, Rachel Doležal in her own voice and words shares her intriguing account and path of conscious self-definition, embodied in a life of activism. Hers is a meandering journey that evidences a genesis in a very tender age. Her rightful claim to an identity and heritage: Who can challenge its authenticity? The account of a full human, simply being herself, assists us all to see race for what it is, a highly toxic, very destructive and questionable means of defining a common humanity. Rachel forces us all to question what we have come to accept until now without critical engagement. She is undeniably no accidental activist.”

  — Bishop Clyde N.S. Ramalaine, author of Preach a Storm, Live a Tornado: A Theology of Preaching and a Khoisan, lifelong activist, and leading mind on building a race-free, just, and equitable society in post-Apartheid SA

  “Rachel Doležal’s early life memoir is not simply a narrative of radical activism. It is full of physical textures and sensations—flat-tops, braided hair, oiled moisturized Black skin, Dashikis, and fluidity of sexual orientation—juxtaposed against some horrible domestic brutalities. It serves to critique the cultural straitjacket of traditionalist white ‘Protestant work ethic’ society. At this moment of alt-right reactionism, it punctures the fake nostalgia for an imagined pre-multiculturalism era of supposed purity and authenticity. Unsurprisingly, her willingness to find a home and cultural vocabulary in the black community makes Ms. Doležal a target for those advocates of continuing conservative orthodoxies and social hierarchies. That in itself should encourage us to be open to her account of her personal and social evolution and pleasures of différance.”

  — Gavin Lewis, Black British writer and academic

  “The storm of vitriol Rachel received in the national spotlight was as cruel as it was undeserved. Her deep compassion for others shines through every chapter of her life and has clearly motivated her truly outstanding advocacy work.”

  — Gerald Hankerson, president of the NAACP Alaska Oregon Washington State

  “US Census Bureau research suggests that millions of Americans change their racial self-identification from one census to the next. Here is the chance to learn about one person’s transition, with all the nuance that no media sound bite could ever capture. It’s an incredible story, from rural poverty in a white Montana town to historically black Howard University in Washington DC, spanning partnerships with African American activists and confrontations with white supremacists. And it’s absolutely necessary to know the whole story in order to understand the extraordinary racial journey that Rachel Doležal has made.”

  — Ann Morning, associate professor of sociology at New York University and author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference

  In Full Color

  In Full Color

  FINDING MY PLACE IN A BLACK AND WHITE WORLD

  Rachel Doležal

  with Storms Reback

  BenBella Books, Inc.

  Dallas, TX

  Copyright © 2017 by Rachel Doležal

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  “Mother to Son” from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES by Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, Associate Editor, copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Additional rights by permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Penguin Random House LLC for permission.

  The events, locations, and conversations in this book while true, are recreated from the author’s memory. However, the essence of the story, and the feelings and emotions evoked are intended to be accurate representations. In certain instances, names, persons, organizations, and places have been changed to protect an individual’s privacy.

  BenBella Books, Inc.

  10440 N. Central Expressway, Suite 800

  Dallas, TX 75231

  www.benbellabooks.com

  Send feedback to [email protected]

  First E-Book Edition: March 2017

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Doležal, Rachel, 1977– author. | Reback, Storms, author.

  Title: In full color : finding my place in a black and white world / Rachel Doležal with Storms Reback.

  Description: Dallas, TX : BenBella Books, Inc., [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016046569 (print) | LCCN 2016047908 (ebook) | ISBN 9781944648169 (trade cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781944648176 (electronic)

  Subjects: LCSH: Doležal, Rachel, 1977– | Women civil rights workers—United States—Biography. | Racially mixed families—United States—Biography. | African Americans—Race identity—United States. | Women, White—Race identity—United States. | Passing (Identity)—United States. | National Association for the Advancement of Colored People—Biography. | Spokane (Wash.)—Race relations—Biography. | Racially mixed families—Montana—Biography. | Coeur d’Alene (Idaho)—Biography.

  Classification: LCC E185.98.D64 A3 2017 (print) | LCC E185.98.D64 (ebook) | DDC 306.84/60973—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046569

  Editing by Leah Wilson

  Copyediting by James Fraleigh

  Proofreading by Jenny Bridges and Cape Cod Compositors, Inc.

  Cover design by Sarah Dombrowsky

  Doležal cover and author photography by Carl Richardson

  Reback author photography by Tammy Brown

  Text design and composition by Publishers’ Design and Production Services, Inc.

  Printed by Lake Book Manufacturing

  Distributed by Perseus Distribution

  www.perseusdistribution.com

  To place orders through Perseus Distribution:

  Tel: (800) 343-4499

  Fax: (800) 351-5073

  E-mail: [email protected]

  Special discounts for bulk sales (minimum of 25 copies) are available. Please contact Aida Herrera at [email protected].

  For Izaiah, Franklin, Langston, and Esther

  Well, son, I’ll tell you:

  Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

  It’s had tacks in it,

  And splinters,

  And boards torn up,

  And places with no carpet on the floor—

  Bare.

  —LANGSTON HUGHES

  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  1.Delivered by Jesus

  2.Escaping to Africa (in My Head)

  3.Oatmeal

  4.Drowned by Religion

  5.Hustling to Make a Dollar

  6.Chicken Head Baseball & Huckleberry Stains

  7.Thirteen I

  8.Adopting Ezra

  9.Separate but Equal

  10.Hair I

  11.Million Man March

  12.Belhaven College

  13.Hair II

  14.Adopting a New Dad I

  15.Kevin & Howard

  16.Emancipation

  17.San Francisco

  18.Thirteen II

  19.Adopting a New Dad II

  20.Malicious Harassment

  21.Raising Black Boys in America

  22.The Third Strike

  23.Black Lives Matter

  24.Lorenzo Hayes

  25.Ambushed by Reporter

  26.Unemployed

  27.New York

&nb
sp; 28.Backlash

  29.Survival Mode

  30.Rebirth

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Foreword

  I WAS BORN IN 1938 in Birmingham, Alabama, which was one of the most segregated cities in the country at the time. I have vivid memories of the city’s strict segregation laws and how they affected me as a child: being barred from “Whites-Only” restaurants, told to sit at the back of the bus, forced to drink from “Colored” water fountains, and obliged to step off the sidewalk to allow white people to pass.

  When I was five, my father took me and my three-year-old brother to a theater that was open to Black people for just a single viewing each week—the late show on Thursday evenings—and we had no choice but to sit in the balcony. For every other show, the theater was reserved solely for white people. The show my father took me and my brother to ended so late the buses and trollies were no longer running, forcing us to walk home. My father chose the most direct route, which happened to go through a white neighborhood. He held our hands as we walked, and when a shadowy figure emerged from beneath a tree, I could feel my father’s grip grow tighter. Then came the ominous words:

  “What you doing in this neighborhood, boy?!”

  It was a white police officer. My father told us to look straight ahead and keep moving. We walked past the officer but could hear his steps gaining on us from behind. When the officer caught up to us in the light of a street lamp, he issued another challenge and grabbed my father’s left shoulder. My father let go of our hands. The officer raised his billy club to strike him.

  Pow!

  The sound reverberated down the street. The noise was shocking but not as much as the realization of who had delivered the blow: my father had slapped the policeman so hard I could see the imprint of his hand on the man’s face. The policeman fell to his knees. In the blink of an eye, my father pulled out his pocketknife, opened it, and held it to the man’s throat. “We’re on our way home from a picture show,” he calmly explained. “We aren’t bothering anyone. I don’t want any trouble, but if you harass us anymore, I’ll cut your throat.”

  My father grabbed my brother’s hand and mine and swiftly led us away from the officer, who was still down on the ground. I half-expected a shot to ring out, but there was only the echo of our footsteps.

  Because of that incident, we had to leave town, and we had to leave quickly. The next night, my father took us to the train station, where we caught the midnight train to Chicago—and safety. By so doing, we became part of the Great Migration, joining millions of other Blacks as they moved from the South to the North in search of better paying jobs (and fewer lynchings) throughout the twentieth century.

  The North served as a launch pad to a better life for me. When I was seventeen and living in Detroit, Michigan, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and went on to serve in Vietnam. After I returned to the States, I joined the San Diego Police Department, but found my true calling in academia. For nineteen years, I taught in public schools, community colleges, and as a guest lecturer, and that role brought me a great deal of happiness.

  While I may have been able to flee the racial discrimination that was so common in Birmingham when I was a child, it continued to haunt me throughout my adult life. I did my best to combat racism with the most positive attitude I could muster given the circumstances. Tasked with this daily chore, I also came to appreciate others—Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and my father Albert Wilkerson Sr., to name a few—who, by their example and by the power of their convictions, fought racial bias and prejudice.

  Rachel Doležal is also such a person.

  I first met Rachel while she was serving as the education director of the Human Rights Education Institute (HREI) in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Observing her teach children, I saw that she was inclusive and dynamic and a true advocate for every student who attended her programs. One of her duties was to educate people in North Idaho about the Black experience, and in the process she embraced her own African spirit in what was a very toxic part of the country. I saw this special spirit in Rachel in everything she did. It was obvious to me that she was an activist for humanity. I was impressed.

  Largely because of Rachel, I became a volunteer at HREI and got to know her and her son Franklin and, later, her son Izaiah. As I grew close to her and she became like a daughter to me, I didn’t place a lot of emphasis on her ethnicity and I certainly didn’t spend any sleepless nights worrying about what her biological story was. She looked Black and her vibe felt Black, but that’s not what drew me to her. It was her work. What she was accomplishing was much more important to me than what color she was. Yes, I saw her as Black, but it wouldn’t have mattered to me if she were German or Swedish or Chinese. I simply accepted the way she presented herself to the world as a racial and social justice advocate, and, in addition, admired her amazing artistic talent.

  In June 2015, the media “outed” Rachel as a white woman who was passing as Black, using a photograph of me and the fact that she called me Dad as some of their main pieces of evidence. Two reporters, one from the Spokesman-Review and one from People magazine, approached me and asked if I was Rachel’s biological father. I told them no but that I had lots of daughters.

  “What do you mean?” they asked.

  “There are several people who call me Dad who aren’t biologically my children because that’s how we do; it’s a cultural thing.”

  They didn’t understand. I declined to do any more interviews after that.

  That both of Rachel’s parents were white was news to me, but I was hardly upset about it. What upset me was that all the work she was doing was suddenly in jeopardy, as her parents, employers, and colleagues all rushed to throw her under the bus. I didn’t want any part of that. If this country had more people like Rachel who were concerned with doing good things for people and achieving equity for all, it would be a much better place to live and raise children.

  In Full Color is not just an engaging look at one person’s journey of self-discovery but also an important tool that should be studied in classrooms and homes across the United States. It offers a unique opportunity to reflect on the complex social construct of race and racism in this country from the perspective of a young woman who has personally experienced their profound effects from both sides of the color line. Having been a national delegate for Barack Obama in Idaho in 2008 and 2012 and having worked in support of human rights and racial and social justice, I believe Rachel’s book will help cast a light on some of the most pressing and divisive issues that exist in this country today, namely social inequality and racial prejudice.

  —Albert Wilkerson Jr.

  Prologue

  PEOPLE ALWAYS ASK ME what it was like living as a Black* woman. As if I no longer live that way. As if my Blackness were just a costume I put on to amuse myself or acquire some sort of benefits. As if what happened on June 10, 2015, altered my identity in any way.

  I’ll admit to being thrown for a loop when the reporter from a local news channel in Spokane, Washington, who was interviewing me about the hate crimes that had been directed at me and my family, abruptly switched topics and asked, “Are you African American?” On the surface it was a simple question, but in reality it was incredibly complex. Yes, my biological parents were both white, but, after a lifetime spent developing my true identity, I knew that nothing about whiteness described who I was. At the same time, I felt it would have been an oversimplification to have simply said yes. After all, I didn’t identify as African American; I identified as Black. I also hadn’t been raised by Black parents in a Black community and understood how that might affect the perception of my Blackness. In fact, I grew up in a painfully white world, one I was happy to escape from when I left home for college, where my identity as a Black woman began to emerge. Forced into an awkward position by the reporter, I equivocated. When he pressed me, I ended the interview and walked away.
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br />   After footage of this small segment of the interview found its way onto the internet and an article appeared in a local paper “outing” me as white, I became one of the hottest trending topics of the day every day for weeks. A handful of people expressed their support of me, but they were drowned out by all the shouting, as nearly everyone else on the planet was calling for my head on a platter. I understood why some people reacted negatively to the fragments of my story they’d seen in the news. As a longtime racial and social justice advocate, I knew there were certain lines that you simply didn’t cross if you wanted to be accepted by your community—whether it be white or Black—and crossing the color line was one of them. Because I’d been seen and treated as both white and Black, I was intimately familiar with the misgivings both communities had about people who stepped over this ever-shifting line. I also knew the historic consequences for doing so: shaming, isolation, even death. White people created the color line and the taboo for crossing it as a way to maintain the stranglehold on privilege they’ve always enjoyed, but due to the painful history surrounding it, many Black people had also grown adamant about enforcing it. If they weren’t allowed to cross the color line, at least they could take ownership of their side.

  As such, if you dared to cross this boundary, as I have done, and were exposed, you were put in a no-win situation: white folk would see you as a traitor and a liar and never trust you again, and Black folk might see you as an infiltrator and an imposter and never trust you again. As severe as these repercussions were, they didn’t dissuade me from making this journey, for not doing so would have meant turning my back on what I see as my true identity and leaving those I loved most in a vulnerable position. If I’ve hurt anyone in the process, I sincerely apologize. That was never my intention.

  To most people, the answer to the reporter’s question was binary—yes or no—but race has never been so easily defined. In a letter to Thomas Gray in 1815, Thomas Jefferson struggled to determine “what constituted a mulatto,” calling it “a Mathematical problem of the same class with those on the mixtures of different liquors or different metals.” In the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court attempted to clarify the existing racial classifications when it established the “one drop rule”—those with a single Black relative, no matter how distant, were considered Black, even if they appeared white—but this decision only muddled an already complicated issue. If someone who looked white could be considered Black because one of his sixteen great-great-grandparents was Black but a Black person with a white great-great-grandparent was still regarded as Black, what sort of clarity did this provide?