Netflix’s The Rachel Divide offers complicated look at ‘transracial’ activist Rachel Dolezal
Born white but identifying as black, Dolezal is a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People’s chapter in the American city of Spokane. Her story will both enlighten and infuriate you
There’s unlikely to be a more polarising movie this year than The Rachel Divide.
The documentary, which premiered this week at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and streams on Netflix on Friday, attempts to understand Rachel Dolezal, the controversial former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People’s chapter in Spokane, in the American state of Washington, who was born white but identifies as black.
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The film traces her life since 2015, when her parents told a local news station that she has no African heritage. She resigned soon afterwards, amid a backlash for reporting that she was the victim of multiple hate crimes although a subsequent police investigation did not support her claims.
“It feels like I’ve had this trial by the public,” says Dolezal, 40, at the beginning of the movie, which finds her unemployed and pregnant with her second child, Langston (named for African-American poet Langston Hughes).
Unable to leave her house without attracting unwanted attention, she spends most of her days creating art inspired by black and African themes, and writing her memoir In Full Color: Finding My Place in A Black and White World.
Like Dolezal herself, The Rachel Divide raises more questions than answers. She was born to parents she describes as puritanical and religious, and says they physically and emotionally abused her and her adopted siblings, most of whom are black.