Pop star raises eyebrows with new interview in Vanity Fair

Oct 7, 2015 09:22 GMT  ·  By

One of the biggest, strangest and most fascinating stories of last summer was that of Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP President, the Spokane chapter, who was publicly exposed for having lied about being black. Rihanna would call her a “hero,” not a fraud.

Dolezal was born to Caucasian parents and, during her college days, even filed a lawsuit against the university for discriminating against her for being white. In recent years, she started using tanners and hair treatment to give her natural-looking tight curls, and she began passing herself as African-American.

Dolezal is a hero

She also invented a whole new history for herself, one where her adopted brothers, who were black, became her sons, and where a random black man became her father, who was suffering from cancer.

After being exposed in the press as a fraud, she was let go from her position with the NAACP and she went in full damage control mode. She even sat down for an interview with Matt Lauer for NBC’s The Today Show, saying that she “identified” as black. So that must make her black.

Far from helping her clean her soiled reputation, this interview only brought on more ridicule and outrage.

Rihanna is of the opinion that people should have been more understanding towards Dolezal, because she didn’t deserve any of the mean things that were said about her, she says in an interview with Vanity Fair.

“I think she was a bit of a hero, because she kind of flipped on society a little bit,” the Barbadian pop star explains. “Is it such a horrible thing that she pretended to be black? Black is a great thing, and I think she legit changed people’s perspective a bit and woke people up.”

Rihanna gets real with Vanity Fair

In the same Vanity Fair interview, Rihanna also discusses more personal stuff, like her controversial relationship with Chris Brown, who beat her to a bloody pulp in 2009 and with whom she reconciled in 2012, her bold fashion choices and the downsides of fame.

This last topic isn’t one that she often talks about (she’s not one of those celebrities who always complain they’re too famous and too bored with it), which makes her admission surprising: she has days when she wishes she could go out for groceries without causing pandemonium in the streets.

She also rebels once more against the idea that pop stars are role models, because they are not. She signed a record deal to make music, not to be “perfect” or someone’s role model, she says.