There’s a scene at the end of the Netflix documentary about controversial figure Rachel Dolezal when she enters a DMV and comes out a few minutes later with a new name. “A new start,” she says. The whole process seems painless and courteous. If only she could change other parts of her identity so easily.
“The Rachel Divide” is a fascinating, comprehensive and well-crafted documentary about a onetime civil rights activist in Washington state whose life unraveled after she was outed as a white woman pretending to be black.
Director Laura Brownson has masterfully unpacked and knitted together this complicated figure, who still seems to elude easy answers.