Rihanna Calls White NAACP Exec Who Pretended To Be Black “A Hero”

Much of the world may be appalled by how former NAACP executive Rachel Dolezal lied about being Black for decades, but she's still got one major star in her corner: Rihanna. The "Bitch Better Have My Money" singer appears on the cover of Vanity Fair's November 2015 issue, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. In the mag's pages, she got candid about a few things, including casual sex, Chris Brown and how she feels about Dolezal's summer scandal. "I think she was a bit of a hero, because she kind of flipped on society a little bit," Rihanna said during the interview. "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.” It is unclear at this time if Rihanna's definition of a hero differs from that within traditional dictionaries. Yet it seems like the singer isn't quite clear on why people were upset to begin with. Let's just clear this up real quick: Rachel Dolezal celebrating Black culture is a great thing. But celebrating and treasuring a heritage doesn't mean you get to co-opt it for your own. The problem is that — as a white woman pretending to be a Black — Dolezal enjoyed the privileges of belonging to a cultural group, but could have sidestepped the discriminatory drawbacks of being a Black American at any time. As for how Rihanna thinks Dolezal changed perspectives and how she "woke people up," Vanity Fair didn't dig much deeper after that.