Rachel Dolezal said she has been unable to find steady work in the nearly two years since her background became public in media reports, and she is uncertain about her future.
"I was presented as a con and a fraud and a liar," Dolezal told The Associated Press this week. "I think some of the treatment was pretty cruel."
Now 40, she still identifies as black, despite being "Caucasian biologically," she said. And she still has the darkened complexion and frizzy hair that allowed her for years to pass as a light-skinned black person.
"People didn't seem able to consider that maybe both were true," she said. "OK, I was born to white parents, but maybe I had an authentic black identity."
Dolezal had blond hair and freckles while growing up near Troy, Montana, with religious parents. She said she began to change her perspective as a teenager, after her parents adopted four black children. Dolezal decided to become publicly black years later, after a divorce.