Former NAACP branch president Rachel Dolezal, who gained global notoriety for claiming to be black and now insists she’s “trans-black”, quietly changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo last October.
Dolezal changed her name in a Washington court back in October 2016, according to a Daily Mail exclusive. First name Nkechi, short of Nkechinyere, originates from the lgbo language of Nigeria and means “what God has given” or “gift of God”.
The last name -Diallo – is of Fula origin that means “bold”. The Fula people are described as a Muslim ethnic group, who have roots in the Middle East and North Africa. Such people now widely reside in West Africa. In 1999, a Guinean man named Amadou Diallo died in a notorious New York City police shooting, sparking a national uproar.
It remains unclear why Dolezal decided to change her name – one reason could be the negative press she has received after the scandal broke in 2015, when her parents revealed she wasn’t actually black.
She was consequently forced to step down from her position as NAACP branch President in Spokane, Washington and as a professor at a university there. She later admitted that she was “biologically born white to white parents” but insisted that race isn’t “coded in your DNA.”
According to a recent interview with The Guardian, Dolezel is having difficulty getting by after the scandal. She told the paper that she’s nearly homeless, can’t find a job and is currently living on food stamps.
She has applied for well over 100 jobs, including a supermarket position, but received no offers. The only offers the former professor receives are to perform in pornography or reality television, opportunities she has declined.
Interestingly, she didn’t disclose to The Guardian her new name.
Dolezal, however, already covertly used her new name. She started a Change.org petition back in October under the Diallo name, urging the TEDx organization to release one of her controversial speeches on racemade at the University of Idaho in April 2016. She didn’t disclose that the petition was started by her.
“Rachel Dolezal’s TEDx Talk on Race & Identity, given at the University of Idaho in April 2016, is still not available online. Please post her talk online immediately. She should not be censored due to her unique perspective. We want to watch this speech!” read the description of the petition.
The petition received only 30 signatures, but despite coming short of the 100 required signatures, TEDx released the video in November. The organization claimed that Dolezal’s speech “has sparked much internal debate.”
“For many on our staff, sharing the talk risks causing deep offense, and runs counter to TED’s mission of ideas worth spreading,” the statement read. “But for others, now that the talk has been recorded, refusing to post it would unduly limit an important conversation about identity, and the social underpinning of race -and would be counter to TED’s guiding philosophy of radical openness. There’s no easy middle ground here.”
