College professor -“I am a white person who has incorrectly identified as Native my whole life.”

[Anonymous]

I can’t believe I’ve been diligently contributing to a 529 for years with the hope we can finance college for this nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every time I see something like this I am mostly surprised that no one takes issue with the fact that being a heavily "performative" member of some minority is necessary to succeed in academia. At this point, it is almost rare to see a plain old white person with a tenure track job in Humanities. It's not about affirmative action, but about the necessity of someone working in a field to have some kind of life narrative to go along with their career and legitimize their interest in the subject and their standing in the community. It should make people wonder how good today's scholarship can be when one has to wear big earrings and long straight hair in order to have one's research on industrial pollution taken seriously.

It's not rare at all. Have you been to Brown or seen any of the humanities department faculty web pages? There are very very VERY few Native scholars in academia. It's still extremely white dominated. Give me a break.

-white lady with a humanities PhD

[Anonymous]

Interesting. I didn't think you could "incorrectly identify" - but I suppose now it's time for a struggle session. People usually tell us it's important to say "she identifies as female" and not "she is female" because identification is a choice.

This reminds me of when we signed up our child at a public school in this state. Since we actually do not identify in our family, we left the checkbox for race/ethnicity open. The lady taking our form told us we can't. We told her that we do not believe in racial "identification" since race is by and large a social construct and all humans share a common genetic ancestry. This is when she got mad. If you don't put anything in here, we'll mark her as white. We asked her what her definition of "white" is - does it refer to a group of haplotypes and if so, which ones? Would we need to get tested?

In the end, forced to adopt one of the choices on the form (which seemed straight from a 1936 Nazi form except there was no category "deutschbluetig") we checked the "multiracial" box for our child, which is probably the most honest description of all human beings. In 1936, we would have been called "Mischlinge."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every time I see something like this I am mostly surprised that no one takes issue with the fact that being a heavily "performative" member of some minority is necessary to succeed in academia. At this point, it is almost rare to see a plain old white person with a tenure track job in Humanities. It's not about affirmative action, but about the necessity of someone working in a field to have some kind of life narrative to go along with their career and legitimize their interest in the subject and their standing in the community. It should make people wonder how good today's scholarship can be when one has to wear big earrings and long straight hair in order to have one's research on industrial pollution taken seriously.

It's not rare at all. Have you been to Brown or seen any of the humanities department faculty web pages? There are very very VERY few Native scholars in academia. It's still extremely white dominated. Give me a break.

-white lady with a humanities PhD

NP. Point taken, but 1) The PP did not say that there were many Native scholars in academia. Nor would one expect there to be a large number given the size of the population and their oppression. and 2) How many of the recent tenure track hires in the humanities at schools like Brown and Berkeley are heterosexual cis whites?

[Anonymous]

It’s only acceptable if employers hire according to race which is illegal.

[Anonymous]

I’m half Asian but was constantly identified as Latino growing up. I need some points! JK.

I was treated horribly when people thought I was Latino, so it’s super bad out there.

[Anonymous]

I feel a bit bad for people who were raised with incorrect information about their identity and developed a strong connection with the culture they thought they belonged to only to find out they never belonged. This is especially hard since they genuinely believed it and later have people accusing them of intentionally being liars and scammers.

These days, though, you’ve really got to get that dna test done before you claim anything and proactively address the results if you get it done later in life and find out the information you had was wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel a bit bad for people who were raised with incorrect information about their identity and developed a strong connection with the culture they thought they belonged to only to find out they never belonged. This is especially hard since they genuinely believed it and later have people accusing them of intentionally being liars and scammers.

These days, though, you’ve really got to get that dna test done before you claim anything and proactively address the results if you get it done later in life and find out the information you had was wrong.

She’s an anthropology professor who has a ph.d in anthropology. It took her friend a few minutes to google her whole family history. She lied about her mother AND her father being native Americans! Neither story is true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every time I see something like this I am mostly surprised that no one takes issue with the fact that being a heavily "performative" member of some minority is necessary to succeed in academia. At this point, it is almost rare to see a plain old white person with a tenure track job in Humanities. It's not about affirmative action, but about the necessity of someone working in a field to have some kind of life narrative to go along with their career and legitimize their interest in the subject and their standing in the community. It should make people wonder how good today's scholarship can be when one has to wear big earrings and long straight hair in order to have one's research on industrial pollution taken seriously.

It's not rare at all. Have you been to Brown or seen any of the humanities department faculty web pages? There are very very VERY few Native scholars in academia. It's still extremely white dominated. Give me a break.

-white lady with a humanities PhD

You have completely missed the point. There may be very few Native scholars overall, but what about scholars that have made their careers by studying and publishing on Native issues? How many of them are white and have no family connection or some sort of life history connection to Native populations? Not a whole lot, certainly not the younger ones. And if you look at the tenure track scholars - the generation coming up - you will see that nearly all those successfully working in an area connected to a particular group of people also have some kind of connection to that people. It's become necessary to have that kind of street credit to have one's research taken seriously, even when it doesn't in fact have any relevance on the actual published work. And if the area being studied involves a minority population, then activism is practically considered professional development. This is NOT about minority representation in academia - it is about a shift toward only members of a group being able to study issues related to that group. You will find the same shift in French departments, Russian departments, and everything else. And no is questioning whether or not a person must be a member of a group in order to study a group, or whether that is even advisable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel a bit bad for people who were raised with incorrect information about their identity and developed a strong connection with the culture they thought they belonged to only to find out they never belonged. This is especially hard since they genuinely believed it and later have people accusing them of intentionally being liars and scammers.

These days, though, you’ve really got to get that dna test done before you claim anything and proactively address the results if you get it done later in life and find out the information you had was wrong.

She’s an anthropology professor who has a ph.d in anthropology. It took her friend a few minutes to google her whole family history. She lied about her mother AND her father being native Americans! Neither story is true.

Friend?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every time I see something like this I am mostly surprised that no one takes issue with the fact that being a heavily "performative" member of some minority is necessary to succeed in academia. At this point, it is almost rare to see a plain old white person with a tenure track job in Humanities. It's not about affirmative action, but about the necessity of someone working in a field to have some kind of life narrative to go along with their career and legitimize their interest in the subject and their standing in the community. It should make people wonder how good today's scholarship can be when one has to wear big earrings and long straight hair in order to have one's research on industrial pollution taken seriously.

It's not rare at all. Have you been to Brown or seen any of the humanities department faculty web pages? There are very very VERY few Native scholars in academia. It's still extremely white dominated. Give me a break.

-white lady with a humanities PhD

You have completely missed the point. There may be very few Native scholars overall, but what about scholars that have made their careers by studying and publishing on Native issues? How many of them are white and have no family connection or some sort of life history connection to Native populations? Not a whole lot, certainly not the younger ones. And if you look at the tenure track scholars - the generation coming up - you will see that nearly all those successfully working in an area connected to a particular group of people also have some kind of connection to that people. It's become necessary to have that kind of street credit to have one's research taken seriously, even when it doesn't in fact have any relevance on the actual published work. And if the area being studied involves a minority population, then activism is practically considered professional development. This is NOT about minority representation in academia - it is about a shift toward only members of a group being able to study issues related to that group. You will find the same shift in French departments, Russian departments, and everything else. And no is questioning whether or not a person must be a member of a group in order to study a group, or whether that is even advisable.

It depends on the area of research and the conclusions being drawn, but I think it’s legitimate to think a woman is going to be in a better position to write about women’s issues, extrapolate from that as you will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every time I see something like this I am mostly surprised that no one takes issue with the fact that being a heavily "performative" member of some minority is necessary to succeed in academia. At this point, it is almost rare to see a plain old white person with a tenure track job in Humanities. It's not about affirmative action, but about the necessity of someone working in a field to have some kind of life narrative to go along with their career and legitimize their interest in the subject and their standing in the community. It should make people wonder how good today's scholarship can be when one has to wear big earrings and long straight hair in order to have one's research on industrial pollution taken seriously.

It's not rare at all. Have you been to Brown or seen any of the humanities department faculty web pages? There are very very VERY few Native scholars in academia. It's still extremely white dominated. Give me a break.

-white lady with a humanities PhD

You have completely missed the point. There may be very few Native scholars overall, but what about scholars that have made their careers by studying and publishing on Native issues? How many of them are white and have no family connection or some sort of life history connection to Native populations? Not a whole lot, certainly not the younger ones. And if you look at the tenure track scholars - the generation coming up - you will see that nearly all those successfully working in an area connected to a particular group of people also have some kind of connection to that people. It's become necessary to have that kind of street credit to have one's research taken seriously, even when it doesn't in fact have any relevance on the actual published work. And if the area being studied involves a minority population, then activism is practically considered professional development. This is NOT about minority representation in academia - it is about a shift toward only members of a group being able to study issues related to that group. You will find the same shift in French departments, Russian departments, and everything else. And no is questioning whether or not a person must be a member of a group in order to study a group, or whether that is even advisable.

It depends on the area of research and the conclusions being drawn, but I think it’s legitimate to think a woman is going to be in a better position to write about women’s issues, extrapolate from that as you will.

It's academia, not personal essay writing. Publications are based on research, facts, logical arguments, statistics, math, etc. A woman might know more about what being a woman feels like, but is she really more of an authority on the effects of toxic waste on fertility, or mental health outcomes for female prisoners with postpartum depression? My point is that good scholarship stands independently, and the types of subject areas that are currently trending toward only recognizing scholarship by members of a particular group, are dealing with matters that are not in fact relevant to one's DNA, but to one's research skills. Perhaps you don't understand how scholarship works - it's supposed to be unbiased.

[Anonymous]

I still don't understand why identifying as any gender you choose is encouraged, but identifying as any race you choose is forbidden. Makes zero sense. Like so much liberal nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I still don't understand why identifying as any gender you choose is encouraged, but identifying as any race you choose is forbidden. Makes zero sense. Like so much liberal nonsense.

If you can't figure out the difference between the two you're honestly just stupid.

Race is based on heritage. Gender is a social construct.

[Anonymous]

Frankly there needs to be strong get vetting. If she received scholarships or grants meant for Native Americans there is no reason why they should not have asked for tribal identification. I guess maybe more will come out in how she overcame that.