Feeling Black

The Rachel Divide thus juxtaposes the personal with the political to raise important questions about self-perception and the persona we adopt for the outside world

In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, the then head of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was outed as a white woman who had passed as black and worked with the black community for many years. Dolezal was fired from her position as well as the professorship she held at a local college.
 
A new Netflix documentary, The Rachel Divide, tracks Dolezal’s life in the aftermath of the incident, how she has coped with the public humiliation, and how her relationship with the local black community has altered since. (She is generally