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Dolezal is a person of Northern and Central European ancestry; genealogical researches of her ancestry have found no non-European ancestry.[74] She identifies as black.

According to her brother Ezra, Dolezal began changing her appearance as early as 2009, when she began using hair products that she had seen Ezra's biological sister use. She began darkening her skin and perming her hair sometime around 2011. When Ezra moved in with Rachel in 2012, she told him that Spokane-area residents knew her as black and said, "Don't blow my cover."