White born Rachel Dolezal returned to the spotlight Monday on "Today" to discuss her new memoir, "In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World" on Monday's Today show and one thing is clear: She's Black, that's her story and she's sticking to to it.
"I don't identify as African American, I identify as black," she told "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie. “I am part of the Pan-African diaspora and I definitely feel like in America, even though race is a social construct and we've acknowledged this in academia and in science there still is a line drawn in the sides."
"There still are sides. Politically, there's a black side and a white side, and I stand unapologetically on the black side. I stand with my own internal sense of self and my own values. I stand with my sons, I stand with my sister, and I also stand really with the greater cause of challenging the myth of white supremacy,"said Dolezal.
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View Story"I really prefer to just be exactly who I am,” she said. "And black is really the closest race and culture category descriptive term that represents the essential essence of who I am."
Calling her memoir "difficult," she insisted that it was a story that needed to be told.
"You know, the book was a difficult one to write, for sure," she said. "But I felt like it was kind of a little bit forced upon me as far as just the need to tell the whole truth about my life and the full story."
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View Story"I really hope that readers are encouraged to be exactly who they are. Like I said, I want to tell the whole story of my life, and I hope that in some way I'm able to kind of set the record straight because my life story was really warped beyond recognition by a lot of the negative press in 2015," Dolezal said.
Dolezal also revealed that because of the media scrutiny and backlash she received after identifying as a black woman, she needed to change her name in order to be taken seriously.
"I really felt like I needed to change my legal name in order to be seen for my qualifications and experience rather than just seen for the tabloid publicity that I got in 2015," she said. "When applying for a job, people were just seeing 'Rachel Dolezal' and not paying attention to the wide ranging experience and qualifications that I do have."
