Rihanna calls Rachel Dolezal ''a bit of a hero'' in Vanity Fair interview

10/6/2015 11:18:24 PM

(MENAFN- The Peninsula)

When it was revealed over the summer that Rachel Dolezal president of an NAACP chapter in Spokane Washington was white her unusual story caught the nation's attention.

Could Dolezal a Howard University graduate and civil-rights activist properly claim to be black even though she is Caucasian? Was she "transracial" - properly compared to Caitlyn Jenner? This was fodder for many a think piece.

"Rachel Dolezal is not black - by lineage or lifelong experience - yet I find her deceptions less troubling than the vexed criteria being used to exclude her" Jelani Cobb wrote in the New Yorker. "If blackness is simply a matter of a preponderance of African ancestry then we should set about the task of excising a great deal of the canon of black history up to and including the current president."

But now Dolezal has found an unlikely defender: pop star Rihanna who in a Vanity Fair cover story praised the woman who eventually resigned from the NAACP.

"I think she was a bit of a hero because she kind of flipped on society a little bit" Rihanna said. "Is it such a horrible thing that she pretended to be black? Black is a great thing and I think she legit changed people's perspective a bit and woke people up."

The singer was promptly pilloried by many on Twitter.

"Rihanna called Rachel Dolezal a hero" one wrote. "I'm assuming she meant the sandwich?"

Dolezal most recently in the news when TMZ reported she is pregnant told Vanity Fair over the summer that her identity is "not a costume."

"I don't know spiritually and metaphysically how this goes but I do know that from my earliest memories I have awareness and connection with the black experience and that's never left me" she said. "It's not something that I can put on and take off anymore. Like I said I've had my years of confusion and wondering who I really (was) and why and how do I live my life and make sense of it all but I'm not confused about that any longer. I think the world might be - but I'm not."

The Washington Post

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