WASHINGTON — Rachel Dolezal’s resignation as president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP on Monday was the result of a lack of truthfulness, not about her race, a former NAACP national president told WTOP on Monday.
“It had nothing, quite frankly, to do with her being a white president of an NAACP chapter,” said Kweisi Mfume, also a former Maryland member of Congress.
“The organization has white presidents across the nation; it was formed by whites, Republicans, women, and people involved in the labor movement. So it was a very diverse beginning, and it’s tried to retain as much as it can some sense semblance of that diversity.
“This had more, I think, to do with whether or not she was being as forthcoming as the organization wanted her to be.”
Mfume said the NAACP “clearly remained on the high road” since the accusations surfaced that Dolezal lied about her race.
“They did not impugn her character; they did not rescind her membership. They simply said, ‘Tell us what the facts are, so that we might be able to react.’”
While cautioning that he doesn’t have firsthand knowledge of the situation, he said he believes that “in the absence of that, there was some sort of internal decision, either jointly or individually, for her to step aside.”
Asked about the discrepancy between Dolezal’s self-identification and the biology of her parents, including the use of the term “transracial,” Mfume said that such categories are always fluid.
“We live in a world where terms and definitions change almost yearly, and so I don’t want to say that somebody doesn’t have the right to feel like they are transracial,” he said. “Feeling it and being it are two different things, usually, and so that’s where the disconnect lies. But if she identifies more with African-American culture, and African-American communities and history, that’s one thing. I don’t know that to be the case; I just know that that is what she has said.”
That distance between feeling and being, and the assumption that one can decide for oneself when one has transcended it, has caused problems, Mfume says.
“There are some people who are offended not so much because she is white, but because she has implied that she understands what they’re going through, or that she feels their pain. Even though she hasn’t said that directly, that’s been the underlying assumption.”
Ultimately, he says, the lesson is, “It’s always best to be as truthful as you can be … when you’re in a position of trust.”
