Just hours after Rachel Dolezal, the embattled president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP stepped down from her post, her family appeared on Don Lemon's "CNN Tonight" questioning her sanity.
"I think there's a demonstration of being irrational and very disconnected from reality," the disgraced civil rights leader's mother Ruthanne Dolezal said Monday, when asked about her daughter's state of mind.
Dolezal has faced intense scrutiny for pretending to be African-American despite the fact that her Montana birth certificate identifies her as Caucasian.
Also Read: Rachel Dolezal Resigns From NAACP Post
"Many of the things she's done are not rational, and a normal, sane person wouldn't have taken the approach that she has taken," her father Larry Dolezal told Lemon.
Dolezal's parents appeared on CNN via satellite from their home in Troy, Montana, while her adopted brother Ezra Dolezal joined Lemon on set.
"It is a baffling thing," Ezra said as he search for answers as to why his sister would lie about her race.
Ezra also accused his sister of faking her race to get attention, and describe her appearance as "black face because she basically put on dark makeup and said she was born black."
Family Photo/LinkedIn
Also Read: Rachel Dolezal to Speak With 'Today' Following NAACP Resignation
Ezra said he hadn't spoken to his adopted sister since 2012, "she cut off everybody," he explained.
Earlier in the day, multiple media outlets, including the Washington Post, reported that Dolezal sued Howard University in 2002, before reinventing herself, claiming she was discriminated against because she was white.
Dolezal said she was denied a teaching post and scholarship money at the historically black college because she was a pregnant white woman, court documents obtained by The Smoking Gun said. A judge found no basis for her claims, and the decision was later upheld by an appeals court.
Also Read: NAACP Leader Rachel Dolezal Slammed on Social Media for Posing as Black
In another development, the Spokane weekly the Inlander announced on Monday that it had parted ways with Dolezal, who had acted as a freelance contributor. An editor's note on its website stated that she has "not returned any of our messages seeking comment. We are left wondering, like everyone else, what the whole story is… we, too, feel manipulated and deceived."
Dolezal will officially break her silence in an interview with Matt Lauer on Tuesday's "Today" show. She will also sit down for separate interviews with Savannah Guthrie for "NBC Nightly News," Melissa Harris-Perry for MSNBC, and NBCBLK, NBCNews.com's African-American vertical, according to Today.com.
