Rachel Dolezal parents: ‘She is not at peace’

Cathy Newman asked Ruthanne and Larry about a number of things Ms Dolezal, who resigned as president of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) after being “outed” as white.

Ms Dolezal told NBC that she had identified as a black person since she was five, using the “brown crayon” instead of the “peach crayon” when drawing herself.

“That never happened,” Ruthanne said. Asked if Ms Dolezal was lying, Ruthanne said: “Yes she was. I’m sad to say she was.”

On Ms Dolezal’s refusal to apologise, her mother said it demonstrates “that Rachel has a very big personal crisis with her own identity.”

“She is not at peace with who she is,” Ruthanne said. “She’s trying to become someone else besides who she is and distance herself from her biological family.

“In doing so now she has created all these integrity issues because she’s not telling the truth.

“Rachel somehow believed that to advance her career in social activism she felt that she had to be a different ethnicity.”