“The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg came to the defense of embattled NAACP chapter head Rachel Dolezal on Monday: “If she wants to be black, she can be black.”
“Look, just like people say ‘I feel like I’m a man, I feel like I’m a woman, I feel like I’m this.’ She wants to be a black woman, fine,” Goldberg said. “Everything that comes with that, she is prepared for. Okay.”
“Another part that people had a problem with her is also that she was speaking to a lot of young black youths and telling them, ‘I know how you feel. I’ve been through blah, blah, blah.’ She doesn’t know. You can’t know,” co-host Rosie Perez said.
“But she’s been passing as this woman for over five years,” Goldberg responded. “If this bitch don’t know by now what it’s like, she’s never going to know.”
“If I would have known I could go black, think about how thin I would look black, Nicolle,” guest co-host Michelle Collins told fellow panelist Nicolle Wallace. “An immediate 15 pounds off.”
“I would want to be an Asian woman,” Collins continued. “I can’t be. I always say it’s to get a Jewish husband.”
Newly named co-host Raven-Symoné said that Collins could still live under the same cultural practices of an Asian woman if she so chose. “But if I went to Japan, they would flee from me because I’m almost six feet tall!” Collins said.
Dolezal came under fire recently when it was revealed she has been passing as an African-American for years despite the fact that her parents are both white. She nevertheless rose to prominence in the African-American community, becoming the leader of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP.