RACHEL DOLEZAL

Blackness better defines who I am philosophically and socially than whiteness does.

I wish Americans understood that race is a social construct, even if we don't want it to be.

I stand on the black side of issues, philosophically, politically, socially, and for me to not check that box, I felt like, would be some sort of betrayal of not only who I am but also the community I affiliate with.

I'm more black than I am white. That's the accurate answer from my truth.

People didn't seem able to consider that maybe both were true. OK, I was born to white parents, but maybe I had an authentic black identity.

It's a painful thing to talk about my childhood. I kind of don't talk about it much.

I've never been fully transparent or an open book, even to those you'd call close friends.

I think some people feel that if you question the reality of race, you're questioning racism; you're saying racism isn't real. Racism is real because people actually believe race is real. We'd have to really let go of the 500-year-old idea of race as a worldview in order to undo racism.

I'm bisexual. And so, you know, I've dated men and women.

Everybody's life matters. But that's why we have to say black lives matter, because the highest disproportionality, police brutality, disenfranchisement, education disproportionality in school discipline, curriculum, misrepresentation, all of this.

I definitely am not white.

Overall, my life has been one of survival, and the decisions that I have made along the way, including my identification, have been to survive.

About five years old, I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon and, you know, the black curly hair. That's how I was portraying myself.

My husband didn't want me to wear any black hairstyles. Nicole Kidman was his standard of beauty.

Any man can be a father; not any man can be a dad.

I am part of the pan-African diaspora.

I have a huge issue with blackface.

I would pretend to be a dark-skinned princess in the Sahara Desert or one of the Bantu women living in the Congo... imagining I was a different person living in a different place was one of the few ways... that I could escape the oppressive environment I was raised in.

Hopefully, even if I am judged or there's confusion, anger, about how I identify, I hope that people can understand that family is fluid.

Race is such a contentious issue because of the painful history of racism. Race didn't create racism, but racism created race.

I do wish I could have given myself permission to really name and own the me of me earlier in life.

I felt very isolated with my identity virtually my entire life, that nobody really got it and that I didn't really have the personal agency to express it.

There's no such thing as racial, non-white supremacy.

I think there's definitely a stereotype of white privilege, and that stereotype gets expanded to mean rich, not oppressed, not suffering, et cetera. And yes, it's a misperception.

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 would say I'm black, and there's a difference in those terms.