Race, as a social construct, has always confused and confounded me. The categories we put certain ethnicities always seemed arbitrary — why are Asians and Pacific Islanders grouped together? I saw a graph that separated the two groups for the first time in forever the other day, but I also always wondered why my Iranian friend was classified as “white.” One of my close friends in elementary school joked he could put whatever he wanted on the census, or at least he could choose between Black and Asian, having mixed Caribbean and Indian heritage.
Sometimes, hyperfocus on race and identity is a common part of our lived experience. A Hispanic person has a very different lived experience than a white person, and in my life as an Asian, I have a very different lived experience than most of my Black friends.
However, I have recently been enlightened to how our race and ethnic identity can be a symbol of status in certain circles, particularly in academia and very left-leaning circles. I certainly have more credibility writing about anti-Asian hate and topics particular to Asian-American experiences because I’m an Asian-American, but to a certain point, writing about my Asian experiences requires some generalizing, and I’m careful to straddle the line of “these are my lived experiences as a human being” with “these are my lived experiences as an Asian.”
The last thing I want to do is talk about my experiences and perspectives like I’m representative of all Asians. I’m not saying white, Black, Hispanic, or non-Asian ethnicities can’t write about Asian experiences, but there is an undercurrent that dismisses the credibility of anyone who isn’t Asian in the conversation. The same goes for other races.
That reality, as well as a podcast I listened to in the New York Times, raised a question for me: in certain circles, are certain identities and ethnicities coveted and desirable? And because of that coveted status associated with being Native American, as per Sarah Viren’s New York Times article, is that why we’re seeing more reports of ethnic fraud (people lying about their ethnicity)? According to Mary Annette Pember at Diverse Education, more and more people are starting to claim American Indian identity who do not have any American Indian heritage. The Association of American Indian and Alaska Native Professors used the term “ethnic fraud” to refer to people who lie about their ethnic identity.
Let me just say it requires a substantial amount of privilege to be a white person masquerading as Black, Native American, or any other underrepresented race. I heard stories about Rachel Dolezal and other cases of ethnic fraud, but I thought these stories were too rare to warrant much attention, and focusing on these cases would detract from the aims of justice movements. However, the case of Andrea Smith, who Viren writes as “The Native Scholar Who Wasn’t,” really caught my attention this morning on my drive to work.
My summary of Viren’s article is that Andrea Smith is a very prominent scholar in Native American studies. Throughout her life and in her Ph. D. application, she claimed to have Cherokee ancestry. But Smith was not actually Native American and was caught misrepresenting her ethnicity as a Native American, acquiring scholarships and prominence in the field for doing so. 12 people published an open letter in Indian Country Today against Smith, asking her to account for her claims of Native American identity. In passing herself off as a Cherokee, Smith cost real Native Americans opportunities in higher education and undermining the credibility of the entire world of academia.
“She positioned herself as Cherokee,” said J. Kehaulani Kauanui. “She had something in the application that talked about what it meant for urban Native Americans away from homeland.”
So why do people do this? Why do the Dolezal’s and Andrea Smiths of the world lie about their race? Recently, a George Washington University professor named Jessica Krug has also revealed to have lied about being Black, actually being a white Jewish woman.
Identity is complex, and it’s too simple a solution to say “you’re either white/Black/Hispanic/Asian/Native American or not.” To me, it’s clear many commit ethnic fraud to gain greater opportunity and credibility in their respective worlds. Of course, we seek more Native American perspectives in Native American studies. A lot of people say race is just a social construct, which it is. But have we gone too far in our pursuit of identity politics, to the point where people seek tremendous personal gain in lying about their identities? Or do we need better scrutiny and regulation in a system where people are called out and punished for misrepresenting their identities?
I do not know the answers to these questions. It is interesting, though, how being of a certain race and especially not being white gives you more social currency in left-wing circles. And once you factor in the intersectional identity politics of gender and sexuality, the farther you get away from being a cis white male, the more credibility and authority you hold in those circles, and academia is one of those circles. Class certainly has a lot of weight too, and someone from a low-income family has been through more struggle, on average, than the same person from a wealthy family.
But at a certain level, the Oppression Olympics gets a bit too ridiculous, even for those of us on the left. At some point, all these points of identity become too much. I have friends in Europe and just outside the U.S. in general who think the way Americans talk about race is ridiculous, particularly people in homogeneous Southeast Asian countries. Ultimately, I believe it is this overreach of the well-intentioned effort to prioritize underrepresented voices that people like Rachel Dolezal and Andrea Smith try to masquerade as underrepresented identities.
For people to try to masquerade and commit ethnic fraud is indicative of a whole new level of elitism in our circles. Of course, it’s no secret that academia is an elitist world. But simply the vocabulary we use is inaccessible to people who aren’t college-educated, heightened by the fact that Democrats are increasingly becoming the party of the college-educated. The term “intersectionality” is an incredibly abstract and low priority to someone worried about putting food on the plate every day. The nuances of anti-racism probably seem ridiculous to someone who isn’t in these left-wing circles we inhabit.
If Andrea Smith is producing good scholarship and research, maybe her identity should not matter. At a certain point, this hyperfocus on identity is blinding. Where it does matter is where she steals opportunities from Native Americans in terms of scholarships, admissions, and faculty positions, and Smith clearly did brandish her positioning as a Native American to her own benefit.
But there’s more that incentivizes people to take on a more marginalized identity that’s not their own, more than just scholarships. It is a world that fetishizes oppression, or at least a world that fetishizes oppressed identities. There’s just more “street cred” with taking on the marginalized identity.
People in academia put more weight on Andrea Smith’s scholarship on Native American studies because they thought she was Native American — it’s ludicrous for anyone to think she would have gotten as far as she did claiming to be white. The social benefits of being seen as Native American helped Smith gain employment. The temptation to misrepresent yourself is especially pronounced for the white progressive because of the cognitive dissonance of being a part of (what’s viewed as) an oppressor class and fighting on behalf of the oppressed. The honest and well-intentioned goal of academia incorporating more marginalized voices has shown it can be exploited by people like Smith, who seize on the racial dogma of our present moment for personal gain.
To say Dolezal, Smith, and Krug engaged in cultural appropriation is an understatement. But how often are people actually caught misrepresenting their race? To interrogate someone and question their proclaimed identity is extremely rude, taboo, and brings no benefit to anyone who wants to go on a full-scale investigation.
How, after all, can you feel good about yourself going on a witch-hunt to find out if someone is actually Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, or Pacific Islander? The civil and politically correct thing to do is to accept everyone’s proclaimed identity at face value. And applying a greater level of scrutiny to see if someone is “really” of a certain ethnicity may be even more problematic: who would be the gatekeepers of who qualifies for a certain race? One administrator in Viren’s article says this would go into an era of “new McCarthyism.”
So, there’s no way to investigate any ethnic identities in academia, which leaves only one system:
“In the absence of any real policy for dealing with ethnic fraud, what academia is left with is a risky marketplace of accusations,” Viren says.
In the family, it wasn’t even just Andrea Smith whose Native American ethnicity has been called into question. Her sister, Justine Smith, also has questionable claimed Native American identity. Unlike Jessica Krug, Andrea Smith has not confessed to not being of the proclaimed race.
Part of me believes the issue of people lying about their race, especially in a world like academia, is so high in the clouds and Ivory Tower-esque that I question why it matters. Most people going about their days will not be thinking about a small minority of academics lying about their race. But according to Viren, we should care because Krug wasn’t alone in being caught lying about her race — six people in academia had also confessed to masquerading and misrepresenting themselves by the end of 2020. And we should also care because academia, as an industry that is known for its ethical standards.
“So what does it mean that we’re also a haven for fakes?” Viren asks.
Viren talks about stories of ethnic fraud gone untold in academia. The most high-profile case was Elizabeth Warren falsely listing Native American identity but the problem is even more prevalent in higher education. Viren also cites a 1992 article in The Detroit News saying thousands of students misrepresent themselves as Native Americans, which costs real American Indians admissions spots.
I didn’t know the system in academia was exploited to such an extent. There are as many opportunists in academia as there are in the regular world, which means people misrepresent themselves in the real world too. After listening to the podcast of Viren’s article, I understand ethnic fraud hurts the identity that is being misrepresented. But is there anything that can be done about it? It’s tough to say, but I’m leaning towards no.
Photo by Chad Greiter on Unsplash
Originally published on June 7, 2021 on Medium.