race

Rachel Dolezal’s One Regret Is That She Didn’t Identify As Black Sooner

Rachel Dolezal — the NAACP leader who was accused of pretending to be black last year — is writing a book about racial identity. In an interview with the Today show on Tuesday, she discussed life after the controversy and the as-yet-untitled book, and fielded awkward questions from NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, who failed to get her to say sorry.

“Have you done any reflecting since we first talked a year ago?” Guthrie asked. “Just how this all happened? Do you feel now — did you have any regrets about some of the things you said about yourself that have now been revealed to not be true?” Dolezal, eerily calm, replied:

I’m not sure what you’re referring to with that, but definitely I don’t have any regrets about how I identify. I’m still me, and nothing about that has changed.

Guthrie continued to press her: “Looking back it it now, do you feel like, I wish I had been just more up front about that? It would have saved me a lot of heartache.” Dolezal was insistent that she had no regrets, except maybe one: not identifying as black sooner.

I do wish that I could have … given myself permission to really name and own the me of me earlier in life. I mean, it took me almost 30 years to get there, but certainly I feel like, you know, it’s a complex issue. How do you just sum up a whole life of coming into who you are in a sound bite? So those conversations, I feel like moving forward, I don’t have any regrets about that.

She’s looking forward to what’s ahead: a soon-to-be-released TED Talk, speaking engagements, teaching, and a return to social-justice work.

Rachel Dolezal Still Isn’t Sorry