I wish Americans understood that race is a social construct, even if we don't want it to be.
In the Dolezal family, you couldn't always count on your parents to keep you safe.
I certainly don't stay out of the sun, and I also don't, as some of my critics have said, put on blackface as a performance.
I'm bisexual. And so, you know, I've dated men and women.
I really feel like there have been moments of some level of creative nonfiction. I have kind of had to explain or justify some of the timeline and logistics of my life in a way that made sense to others.
I have a huge issue with blackface.
I did work and bought all my own clothes and shoes since I was 9 years old. That's not a typical American childhood life.
I felt very isolated with my identity virtually my entire life, that nobody really got it and that I didn't really have the personal agency to express it.
It's a painful thing to talk about my childhood. I kind of don't talk about it much.
There's no such thing as racial, non-white supremacy.
I stand on the black side of issues, philosophically, politically, socially, and for me to not check that box, I felt like, would be some sort of betrayal of not only who I am but also the community I affiliate with.
I was presented as a con and a fraud and a liar. I think some of the treatment was pretty cruel.
I don't think you can do something wrong with your identity if you're living in your authenticity.
People didn't seem able to consider that maybe both were true. OK, I was born to white parents, but maybe I had an authentic black identity.
I want to provide for my kids.
About five years old, I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon and, you know, the black curly hair. That's how I was portraying myself.
Overall, my life has been one of survival, and the decisions that I have made along the way, including my identification, have been to survive.
I think that, in America, even though race is a social construct, I mean, we say this in theory, but I think a lot of people don't believe that it really is. And so it's still a very racialized society.
You can't just say in one sentence what is blackness or what is black culture or what makes you who you are.
I do wish I could have given myself permission to really name and own the me of me earlier in life.
