For her upcoming November Vanity Fair feature, pop star Rihanna strips down, while also heaping high praise on Rachel Dolezal and explaining why she thought she could change Chris Brown after he assaulted her in 2009.
Dolezal, the former head of the Spokane, WA NAACP, made headlines in June, after claiming to be the victim of racially motivated discrimination. The 37-year-old was found to have been born white, and had lied about her race, going as far as posing as a black woman.
Rihanna told Vanity Fair that Dolezal should be praised, not punished, for lying about her race.
“I think she was a bit of a hero, because she kind of flipped on society a little bit,” said Rihanna. “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.”
Rihanna also talked about her relationship with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, who viciously assaulted her before the 2009 Grammy’s, telling the mag why she thought she could change him, when taking him back three weeks after the attack.
Rihanna said:
I was that girl…that girl who felt that as much pain as this relationship is, maybe some people are built stronger than others. Maybe I’m one of those people built to handle sh*t like this.
Maybe I’m the person who’s almost the guardian angel to this person, to be there when they’re not strong enough, when they’re not understand the world, when they just need someone to encourage them in a positive way and say the right thing.
I was very protective of him. I felt that people didn’t understand him. Even after … But you know, you realize after a while that in that situation you’re the enemy.
You want the best for them, but if you remind them of their failures, or if you remind them of bad moments in their life, or even if you say I’m willing to put up with something, they think less of you – because they know you don’t deserve what they’re going to give.
“Sometimes you just have to walk away…I don’t hate him,” she said. “I will care about him until the day I die. We are not friends, but it’s not like we’re enemies. We don’t have much of a relationship now.”
The singer also refuted her “party-girl” image, while explaining the apparent clash between reality and her reputation in the media.
“I honestly think how much fun it would be to live my reputation. People have this image of how wild and crazy I am, and I’m not everything they think,” she said.
“The reality is that the fame, the rumors – this picture means this, another picture means that – it really freaks me out. It made me back away from even wanting to attempt to date. It’s become second nature for me to just close that door and just be O.K. with that,” she continued.
Rihanna called expectations of her, “too scary and unrealistic.”
Read the interview in its entirety, by clicking here.