US civil rights champion investigated amid claims she is pretending to be black
A US civil rights campaigner is under investigation amid claims that she has been pretending to be black for years.
The white parents of Rachel Dolezal - who is president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Spokane, Washington - have been quoted in various media reports claiming that she has been hiding her true ethnic background.
According to local broadcaster KXLY, Dolezal is now being investigated by local authorities over claims she listed her race as African-American on an application for a local independent commission, which she chairs.
Her parents have reportedly revealed she is in fact of Czech, Swedish and German descent, with a touch of Native American heritage.
The news report claims public records, including Dolezal's birth certificate, show her to be the daughter of Ruthanne and Lawrence Dolzeal from Montana.
Earlier this year, Spokane NAACP posted a picture on its Facebook page showing Dolezal with an African-American man, with the accompanying post claiming he was her father.
Despite the Facebook post claiming the man would be visiting the local NAACP chapter in January, Dolezal told a reporter from the KXLY station in the US that he had not been able to make it.
Buzzfeed News, which also spoke to the woman's father, quoted him as saying: "She's our birth daughter and we're both of European descent [...] we're puzzled and it's very sad."
He added that his daughter “doesn’t want us visible in the Spokane area in her circle because we’re Caucasian.”
Questioned by KXLY about the picture and the allegations, Dolezal repeated the assertion that the man was her father.
The reporter repeated the question over whether her father was really an African American man, she replied: "That's a... I don't know what you're implying."
Asked if she was really African-American, she said:
She then walked off camera.
Dolezal's profile page on the website of East Washington University - where she is a professor in the Africana Studies Programme - says she has clashed with white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, and alleges that she has received hate mail.
In a joint statement, Spokane mayor David Condon and City Council President Ben Stuckart, said they were taking the concerns raised "very seriously".
The NAACP now issued a statement in support of Dolezal, saying it "stood behind" her advocacy record.
Racial identity was not a "qualifying or disqualifying" criteria for workers, it added.