The Real Rachel Dolezal?

Just when we thought Rachel Dolezal had disappeared from the public eye she has resurfaced on an episode of The Real. Earlier this year Rachel Dolezal, civil-rights activist, was caught on video denying the fact that she is a white person pretending to be a black person. Eventually she was “outed” by her parents and this created a huge controversy nationwide.

Monday on Fox’s The Real Dolezal finally admitted to being born white. All of the panelists who are women of color—Adrienne Bailon, Tamar Braxton, Loni Love, Jeannie Mai, and Tamera Mowry Housley—asked Dolezal pointed questions about her experience with cultural appropriation, race, racism, and the criminal justice system.

When questioned about deceiving people, Dolezal replied that, no, she certainly didn’t. “Don’t we all have the right to be exactly who we are?” she asked the audience. Throughout the interview she continued to try to justify her cultural interpretation of race by saying “I think that sometimes how we feel is more powerful than how we’re born,” she said. “And blackness can be defined as philosophical, cultural, biological. You know, it’s a lot of different things to a lot of different people.”

Tamera Mowry gave a passionate response to Rachel’s tired argument that her personal identification somehow cancels out her actual background. Mowry said that she identifies as a black woman but loves and acknowledges the fact that she’s biracial—she’s not erasing who she is the way Rachel Dolezal tried to.

Dolezal finally came through saying, “I acknowledge that I was biologically born white to white parents.” In response, the audience got on their feet and started cheering. “But I identify as black,” Dolezal continued, which basically proved that she has learned nothing at all from being exposed.

-Kayla Brown