In Full Color

A lot of people have made up their minds about Rachel Doležal. But none of them know her real story.

In June 2015, the media “outed” Rachel Doležal as a white woman who had knowingly been “passing” as Black. When asked if she were African American during an interview about the hate crimes directed at her and her family, she hesitated before ending the interview and walking away. Some interpreted her reluctance to respond and hasty departure as dishonesty, while others assumed she lacked a reasonable explanation for the almost unprecedented way she identified herself.

What determines your race? Is it your DNA? The community in which you were raised? The way others see you, or the way you see yourself?

With In Full Color, Rachel Doležal gets to tell the story of discovering her true identity in her own words for the first time.

She describes the path that led her from being a child of white evangelical parents to an NAACP chapter president and respected educator and activist who identifies as Black. Along the way, Rachel recounts the deep emotional bond she formed with her four adopted Black siblings, the sense of belonging she felt while living in Black communities in Jackson, Mississippi, and Washington, DC, and the experiences that have shaped her along the way.

Rachel's story is nuanced and complex, and in the process of telling it, she forces us to consider race in an entirely new light—not as a biological imperative, but as a function of the experiences we have, the culture we embrace, and, ultimately, the identity we choose.

“The storm of vitriol Rachel received in the national spotlight was as cruel as it was undeserved. Her deep compassion for others shines through every chapter of her life and has clearly motivated her truly outstanding advocacy work.” —Gerald Hankerson, president of the NAACP Alaska Oregon Washington State Area

“US Census Bureau research suggests that millions of Americans change their racial self-identification from one census to the next. Here is the chance to learn about one person’s transition, with all the nuance that no media sound bite could ever capture. It’s an incredible story, from rural poverty in a white Montana town to historically black Howard University in Washington DC, spanning partnerships with African American activists and confrontations with white supremacists. And it’s absolutely necessary to know the whole story in order to understand the extraordinary racial journey that Rachel Doležal has made.” —Ann Morning, associate professor of sociology at New York University and author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference

“Finally, Rachel Doležal in her own voice and words shares her intriguing account and path of conscious self-definition, embodied in a life of activism. Hers is a meandering journey that evidences a genesis in a very tender age. Her rightful claim to an identity and heritage: Who can challenge its authenticity? The account of a full human, simply being herself, assists us all to see race for what it is, a highly toxic, very destructive and questionable means of defining a common humanity. Rachel forces us all to question what we have come to accept until now without critical engagement. She is undeniably no accidental activist.” — Bishop Clyde N.S. Ramalaine, author of Preach a Storm, Live a Tornado: A Theology of Preaching and a Khoisan, lifelong activist, and leading mind on building a race-free, just, and equitable society in post-Apartheid SA

“Rachel Doležal’s early life memoir is not simply a narrative of radical activism. It is full of physical textures and sensations— flat-tops, braided hair, oiled moisturized Black skin, Dashikis, and fluidity of sexual orientation—juxtaposed against some horrible domestic brutalities. It serves to critique the cultural straitjacket of traditionalist white ‘Protestant work ethic’ society. At this moment of alt-right reactionism, it punctures the fake nostalgia for an imagined pre-multiculturalism era of supposed purity and authenticity. Unsurprisingly, her willingness to find a home and cultural vocabulary in the black community makes Ms. Doležal a target for those advocates of continuing conservative orthodoxies and social hierarchies. That in itself should encourage us to be open to her account of her personal and social evolution and pleasures of différance.” — Gavin Lewis, Black British writer and academic