LISTEN: Your browser does not support the audio element.

Rachel Dolezal is a prominent civil rights activist and the current president of the Spokane NAACP.

She’s accused of falsely portraying herself as black – for years. Dolezal is president of the local branch of the civil-rights organization, an adjunct professor in the Africana Studies Program at Eastern Washington University and chairwoman of Spokane’s police overnight board.

“The fundamental argument here is if you were born white and born into white privilege and only became a black person lately, can you now claim to be a black person?” said KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross.

“We say there’s this white privilege out there, which white people don’t even know they have — they just accept it as a gift from God — and yet here’s this person who is voluntarily surrendering it. And apparently pretty successfully because she was voted president of the NAACP in Spokane.”

It’s Dolezal’s family that is throwing her under the bus. Her mother told The Spokesman-Review that they haven’t spoken in years, but she’d know if her daughter was black.

She told KREM-TV the family is Czech, Swedish, and German, with some Native American roots.

“Rachel has wanted to be someone she’s not,” she said. “She’s chosen not to just be herself, but represent herself as an African-American woman or a biracial person. And that’s simply not true.”

Ruthanne Dolezal said she’s speaking out about her daughter now because “honesty is the best policy.”

She said her daughter always identified with African-American culture, even at a young age, after the family adopted black children.

Dolezal later married and divorced a black man and her parents say it was after the divorce that their daughter started to “disguise herself” and pose as a black woman.

Rachel Dolezal would not answer questions about her background in an interview with The Spokesman-Review.

“That question is not as easy as it seems,” she said Thursday. “There’s a lot of complexities and I don’t know that everyone would understand that.”

She says the controversy is emerging because of legal issues between family members. Her mother says the family has been aware of the racial claims but has only commented about them when contacted.

Rachel’s reaction to the claims?

“I can understand that,” she told KREM. “Like I said, it’s more important for me to clarify that with the black community and with my executive board than it really is to explain it to a community that I, quite frankly, don’t think really understands the definitions of race and ethnicity.”

KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross asked, how is this different than Bruce Jenner transitioning to a woman?

“Do you, as a woman, feel offended that Bruce Jenner is now Caitlyn Jenner since she was not born as a woman and did not undergo the discrimination that women did?”

Bruce Jenner did not grow up a woman and during those years when women were being discriminated against on a regular basis, he didn’t have to go through that. Now that they’re accepted equally, he comes out.”

The NAACP issued a statement Friday:

“One’s racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard for NAACP leadership. The NAACP Alaska-Oregon-Washington State Conference stands behind Ms. Dolezal’s advocacy record.”

Mayor David Condon and City Council President Ben Stuckart say an inquiry is underway into whether Dolezal violated city polices when she listed herself as white, black and American Indian on her application for the Office of Police Ombudsman Commission.

“If this is true, I’ll be very disappointed,” Stuckart said Thursday, adding that the council will meet soon to discuss the issue.

KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross and the Associated Press contributed to this report.