NEW YORK: A white woman who represents a black civil rights group — The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) — in the US has been masquerading as an African American, her parents told a TV station in Spokane, Washington, on Friday.

The report, which hit TV headlines and the social media channels, has all of America buzzing about the motives of Ms Rachel Dolezal, the woman in question.

“She’s our birth daughter and we’re both of European descent,” the parents told the KREM 2 news channel in Spokane about their daughter Rachel Dolezal.

Dolezal was elected as the President of the Spokane branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People last year.

“We’re puzzled and it’s very sad,” they told the TV channel.

Dolezal’s parents said she has been deceiving people into thinking she is African American, but “we wanted the truth to come out that her heritage is Czech, Swedish and German, with a touch of indigenous American”.

They said she has cut off contact with them in recent years.

Mr and Mrs Dolezal said their daughter had black siblings who were adopted and that she went to school in Mississippi, where the family were part of a mainly black community.

But they said she only began to claim African descent after divorcing her husband, who was black, in 2004.

Her mother, Ruthanne, said Ms Dolezal began to “disguise herself” in 2006 or 2007.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play