Nearly a year after she was forced to resign from the NAACP after being accused of lying about her race, Rachel Dolezal says she is writing a book about racial identity — and remains unapologetic about misleading those who believed she was born black.

“I don’t have any regrets about how I identify,” Dolezal said on NBC’s “Today” show Tuesday. “I’m still me, and nothing about that has changed.”

If anything, Dolezal says, she wishes she would’ve clarified her racial identity sooner.

“I do wish that I could’ve really owned, you know, given myself permission to really name and own the ‘me’ of me earlier in life,” she said. “It took me almost 30 years to get there. But it’s a complex issue.

“Race is such a contentious issue because of the painful history of racism,” she added. “Race didn’t create racism, but racism created race.”

The former head of the NAACP’s Spokane, Wash., chapter set off a firestorm of criticism after her parents revealed she was born white despite the fact that she had represented herself as black for years.

In interviews that followed, Dolezal insisted she identified as black.

“I definitely am not white,” she said on “Today” last June. “Nothing about being white describes who I am. That’s the accurate answer from my truth.”

Dolezal admitted that she had engaged in “creative nonfiction” to “explain or justify” her appearance, but insisted she never misled anyone.

“I didn’t deceive anybody,” Dolezal told Vanity Fair last fall. “If people feel misled or deceived, then sorry that they feel that way, but I believe that’s more due to their definition and construct of race in their own minds than it is to my integrity or honesty, because I wouldn’t say I’m African-American, but I would say I’m black, and there’s a difference in those terms.”

Aside from working on the book, Dolezal also said she is also looking forward to “getting back into racial and social justice work.”









