Rachel Dolezal interview: 'I identify as black' (VIDEO)

NEW YORK (AP) — Rachel Dolezal says she started identifying as black around the age of 5, when she drew self-portraits with a brown crayon.

Dolezal appeared Tuesday on NBC'S "Today" Show.

She said she "takes exception" to the contention that she tried to deceive people.

“I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon, and black curly hair,” she told Lauer.

Dolezal resigned as president of a local branch of the NAACP after her parents said she was a white woman who for years has posed as African-American. A newspaper was the first to identify her as biracial, she said, and she never corrected the paper.

She says that some of the discussion about her has been "viciously inhumane." She was also asked about the black man she told people was her father, she said that he is “my dad.”

“Any man can be a father. Not (any) man can be a dad,” she told NBC's Matt Lauer. Dolezal's parent's have long contested her claims.