– Baffled by daughter’s actions –
Speaking on ABC News, prior to the resignation, parents Lawrence and Ruthanne Dolezal said they were baffled by what their daughter has done.
They said they have known for years about their daughter’s deception, but kept it quiet until reporters recently began asking them questions.
“Rachel is trying to reject her own reality, her own identity and by doing that she does not alter reality,” her mother said.
Dolezal said that if she had the chance to speak to her daughter now, she would urge her to get help.
“I would say, ‘Rachel we love you. We hope you’ll get the help you need to deal with your own personal issues so that you can know and believe and speak the truth,’” Dolezal said.
Rachel Dolezal has dodged questions seeking clarification about her race and ethnicity, and she does not address her race in the resignation letter.
“I feel like I owe my executive committee a conversation,” Dolezal told The Spokesman-Review newspaper last week.
“That question is not as easy as it seems,” she said after being contacted at Eastern Washington University, where she is a part-time lecturer in the Africana Studies Program.
“There’s a lot of complexities… and I don’t know that everyone would understand that.”
And she broke off an interview with a local TV reporter when he asked her point blank: “Are you African American?”
Her parents, who adopted four black children, said their daughter had always been interested in issues of ethnicity and diversity.
But around 2007, they learned from a newspaper article that she was claiming to be African American.
At that point, she had already severed contact with her parents.
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