Race Fraud

[ahhell]

Plenty of things appear obvious until you actually do the research to find out your underlying assumptions were wrong, or you were missing some crucial information.



I love it when your typos are Freudian slips. Are there material economic benefits? No, as you say.



You're welcome to assume that this is some real, large problem despite no evidence pointing to that. It is the right wing position as per this thread. I think it's pretty silly to take something that one only has a handful of examples, and out of those all or almost all are only potential rather than proven, and run around like the sky is falling.

All I see is an internet thread about it along with some rightwing types making fun of the likes of Warren for it. Not exactly anyone acting like the sky is falling.

I may have missed it but has anyone in this discussion suggest that we even do anything other than talk about and yet you are eager to dismiss even the discussion.

 

[wareyin]

All I see is an internet thread about it along with some rightwing types making fun of the likes of Warren for it. Not exactly anyone acting like the sky is falling.

I may have missed it but has anyone in this discussion suggest that we even do anything other than talk about and yet you are eager to dismiss even the discussion.

Asking for concrete evidence of existence for this problem that d4m10n, Zig, and theprestige all believe must be fixed is not dismissing the discussion.

 

[ahhell]

Asking for concrete evidence of existence for this problem that d4m10n, Zig, and theprestige all believe must be fixed is not dismissing the discussion.

If folks have asked for a solution, then they do have to things to show. A. that it happens and more importantly B. That there is harm.

I personally think it happens a lot at the very low level I have described, I'm 1/8th what ever and there is evidence that it happens at least a small amount at the level where folks are getting some advantage to it. Dolezal seems to have gotten a job in part based on here being black. I'm not convinced anything needs to be done beyond the humilation of being found out. If folks can demonstrate that folks are being cheated out of scholarships or something, then maybe I'd consider more action.

 

[d4m10n]

Considering that nobody is actually looking for this sort of thing, that certainly indicates something. There's also basically no mechanism for looking for it.

There is also no mechanism for validating racial or ethnic identity when it really matters, e.g. college admissions. Consider the following exchange between the Solicitor General of North Carolina and Justice Samuel Alito from a recent oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court:

JUSTICE ALITO: Let me just ask one more related question, and that is the circumstance -- and this is a real problem, and I've heard it described to me by people who face it, when can a student honestly claim to fall within one of these groups that is awarded a plus factor? So let's say the student has one grandparent who falls within that class. Can the student claim to be a member of an underrepresented minority?

MR. PARK: Yes, we rely on -- on self-reporting. And -- and we don't give any --

JUSTICE ALITO: All right. One great grandparent.

MR. PARK: If that person believes that that is the accurate expression of their identity, I don't think there would be any --

JUSTICE ALITO: One --

MR. PARK: -- problem.

JUSTICE ALITO: -- great-great grandparent? Are you going to make me continue to go on?

MR. PARK: Right, right, right. I think that as we go on, I agree that it would seem less plausible that that person would feel that this is actually capturing my true racial identity but the same is true for any of the other diversity factors that we rely on.

Overall, Ryan Park made a fairly strong argument but here he reveals that racial diversity is rooted in self-reporting from students who are interested in standing out amongst a pool of university applicants.

What the dozen people mentioned at #277 have in common is not just allegations of claiming a false ethnic background, but also having a high enough public profile that they make the newspapers. Most people doing self-reporting to get into a state school like UNC are well below that level of public scrutiny.

In response to being accused of being long on speculation, d4m10n points out that he's got maybe 12 potential cases.

I'd ask how many of the potential cases you consider to be actually problematic, but that would require you to engage with the substance of the issue here. Murphy knows I'm not that much of an optimist.

 

[wareyin]

I'd ask how many of the potential cases you consider to be actually problematic, but that would require you to engage with the substance of the issue here. Murphy knows I'm not that much of an optimist.

And yet again, here you go assuming that there even is substance to your issue despite having nothing but "potential" instances.

We can't discuss the substance of your substance free claims, so complaining that we don't is just sour grapes.

 

[Graham2001]

The whole point of race fraud (aka 'passing as') is that a member of a group that does not posess advantage pretends to be a member of a group that has, or is perceived to have advantage. This is why in historic times the vast majority of cases were non-whites pretending to be whites.



Nowadays the majority of cases being reported as in the allegations linked below are whites pretending to be non-whites, quite simply it's a natural human reaction.

A relative of a Victorian Labor candidate who has described herself as a "proud Yorta Yorta woman" has said their family has no Indigenous ancestry and has never identified as Aboriginal.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/aust...ritage-claim-disputed-by-relative/ar-AA14kUNx

 

[d4m10n]

The whole point of race fraud (aka 'passing as') is that a member of a group that does not posess advantage pretends to be a member of a group that has, or is perceived to have advantage. This is why in historic times the vast majority of cases were non-whites pretending to be whites.

This is somewhat complicated by the fact that people of ⅞ European American descent (e.g. Homer Plessy) were still considered non-white by the dominant cultural standard of the time.

 

[NewtonTrino]

We get the same thing with people claiming to be Scottish, and not only (though probably mainly) Americans. I've had Americans on this forum insisting they were Scottish because reasons, apparently only having been to Scotland once or twice on holiday, if that.

It does raise the question though, at what point does a great grandparent cease to be relevant? Or how many great grandparents do you need of a particular nationality to be able to claim some sort of ethnic descent? Legal nationality is one thing, but claims based on someone who contributed only one-eighth of your DNA (maybe)? I don't know.

This is interesting to me because I heavily identify with Scotland. I don't consider myself Scottish of course, that's silly. But my DNA and family are heavily Scottish and I can trace most of my ancestry to one particular small area of Scotland on both of my family lines.

Visiting was an amazing experience to me. I was definitely able to verify and see with my own eyes some family connections to the area.

 

[NewtonTrino]

On race fraud I mostly think it's hilarious and not criminal. If you want to LARP as another race be my guest, I try to treat everyone the same anyway.

 

[d4m10n]

Another one of those right wing rags stirring up this controversy.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Sacheen-Littlefeather-Pretendians-17602244.php

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

 

[theprestige]

On race fraud I mostly think it's hilarious and not criminal. If you want to LARP as another race be my guest, I try to treat everyone the same anyway.

There's also immoral and unethical. It's not like human social interactions are all either crimes or okay.

As for fraud. Well, fraud is not hilarious. It's a moral and ethical transgression, even if no statutory crime is being committed. People who lie about their race - or about anything else - in order to gain an advantage at someone else's expense probably don't seem that funny to their victims.

I guess the real question is, what exactly are the advantages of committing race fraud? Gaining some unearned social credit on university campuses doesn't seem like such a big deal. Beating out more deserving candidates for a diversity hire position seems pretty unfunny. Receiving benefits earmarked for underprivileged minorities seems like it probably should be a crime.

Finally, as race fraud becomes more widespread, it will tend to poison the well of equity programs and activism. People will start to perceive all claimants as potentially fraudulent carpetbaggers. They will also start to perceive these programs as creating perverse incentives to fraud and misrepresentation. They will also start to perceive these programs as poorly managed, wasteful, and generally ignorant.

Actually that last paragraph may be more of a feature than a bug. But do we really want an accelerationist, break it to fix it approach to properly gatekeeping minority benefits?

 

[Checkmite]

Finally, as race fraud becomes more widespread, it will tend to poison the well of equity programs and activism. People will start to perceive all claimants as potentially fraudulent carpetbaggers. They will also start to perceive these programs as creating perverse incentives to fraud and misrepresentation.

I usually see this particular argument applied to false claims of rape; but it simply isn't true in either case. Nobody who actually thinks racial equity programs and activism are a necessary social good is going to become convinced they are bad or untenable because fraud sometimes happens. Even social programs with far more and more-easily quantifiable instances of fraud, like food stamps or Medicare, don't actually lose any supporters because from every angle - emotional, moral, purely mathematical - the positive benefits vastly outweigh the cost of any incidental fraud, and this fact was usually part of the calculus that led them to be supporters to begin with.

 

[Venom]

Another one of those right wing rags stirring up this controversy.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Sacheen-Littlefeather-Pretendians-17602244.php

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

See if Sacheen Littlefeather just said she was Pueblo, nobody would have given her a second look.

 

[ahhell]

I usually see this particular argument applied to false claims of rape; but it simply isn't true in either case. Nobody who actually thinks racial equity programs and activism are a necessary social good is going to become convinced they are bad or untenable because fraud sometimes happens. Even social programs with far more and more-easily quantifiable instances of fraud, like food stamps or Medicare, don't actually lose any supporters because from every angle - emotional, moral, purely mathematical - the positive benefits vastly outweigh the cost of any incidental fraud, and this fact was usually part of the calculus that led them to be supporters to begin with.

This overlooks the large group of people aren't especially motivated or bought into racial equity but could be convinced.

 

[d4m10n]

See if Sacheen Littlefeather just said she was Pueblo, nobody would have given her a second look.

Nah bro, the real trick is to pick a (culturally) extinct tribe like the Taíno^WP.

 

[Graham2001]

As reported by the 'Daily Fail'...

A non-binary race faker who pretended to be a Native American for years as she gave lectures and wrote essays about her experience as a 'two-spirit' Native is now being slammed by the communities she once represented.

Kay LeClaire, 28, made a name for herself among Wisconsin's Native American community, co-founding a queer Indigenous artists' collective and speaking out about issues of importance to the tribal communities in the state.

She publicly identified herself in interviews as a Native American 'two-spirit,' a term many Indigenous people use to describe a non-binary gender identity.

Eventually, LeClaire was even appointed to serve on Wisconsin's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Task Force, and was named the first Community Leader-in-Residence at University of Wisconsin Madison's School of Ecology — a position that was funded by the school's Equity and Justice Network.

It has now been revealed that LeClaire received over $4,800 for that role — and earned a salary of $750 a week for her role as an administrator with the art collective, despite never showing up for work.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-Native-American-branded-worse-colonizer.html


And for once the article does contain some good points, namely that fraudsters like this do cause damage to the cause of ensuring racial equality and actual harm to the groups who's mantle they take on, especially after they get caught, as the provide perfect ammunition for right wing groups.

 

[d4m10n]

Statement from the School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin–Madison
https://humanecology.wisc.edu/state...uman-ecology-university-of-wisconsin-madison/

 

[theprestige]

Statement from the School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin–Madison
https://humanecology.wisc.edu/state...uman-ecology-university-of-wisconsin-madison/

"LeClaire’s residency was slated to end on December 31, 2022. They voluntarily resigned their position on December 29, 2022."

I like how they discovered the grift right as the grifter was ready to cash out anyway.

 

[d4m10n]

University of Wisconsin–Madison also happens to be where Jessica Krug got her start in academia: https://depot.library.wisc.edu/repository/fedora/1711.dl:QFERIS4BHT5PE8E/datastreams/REF/content

 

[d4m10n]

Hilaria sigue yendo

https://twitter.com/natlawyerchic/status/1616764676246835200

 

[trustbutverify]

This is an interesting case.

Raquel Evita Saraswati, a Muslim activist who for years has encouraged people to believe that she is a woman of color, including Latina as well as of South Asian and Arab descent, is the AFSC’s chief equity, inclusion, and culture officer, a senior position that gives her access to the files of dozens of the organization’s staff and volunteers. But Saraswati, who was born Rachel Elizabeth Seidel, is not a person of color, according to her mother, Carol Perone.

 

[novaphile]

This is an interesting case.

Not saying that this applies here, but...

I have noticed that people who subscribe to the "One drop of blood makes a person x" idea, are also often the same people that are saying: "This person says that they are x, and they are not x enough."

 

[Susheel]

This is an interesting case.

"Muslim activist"? With a name like Saraswati?

Does it mean activist who is Muslim, or a person who works for the rights of Muslims?

 

[gabeygoat]

Not saying that this applies here, but...

I have noticed that people who subscribe to the "One drop of blood makes a person x" idea, are also often the same people that are saying: "This person says that they are x, and they are not x enough."

intersting and true

 

[Graham2001]

This is an interesting case.

And it's got the attention of the contrarian's at Spiked who've written one of their muck-raking articles, in this case claiming 'passing as BIPOC' is on the rise. (Linked below)



But as I've mentioned earlier in the thread, the basic idea is as old as the hills, there's a 1960s Brazilian film 'Brazil Anno 2000' ('Brazil Year 2000') in which a key plotpoint is someone 'passing as' the member of a former minority group that now has the 'power and privilege'.


https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/03/02/why-race-faking-is-on-the-rise/

A prominent Muslim activist, called ‘Raquel Saraswati’, has just resigned from her role as a chief equity and inclusion officer, after it was revealed last month that she is ‘as white as the driven snow’.

 

[d4m10n]

"One very simple way to get rid of the pressures driving people to pretend to be another race would be to remove race entirely from the set of metrics that we use to judge and rank people."

Sounds tricky.

 

[Puppycow]

Why Buffy Sainte-Marie's 'pretendian' case strikes a nerve

Crystal Fafard, a lawyer from Yellow Quill First Nation and a founding member of the Indigenous Women's Collective in Canada, said feigning indigenous identity is "a form of colonial violence".

"Colonialism itself is a taking - it is about taking resources, land, culture and language and children," she said. "Now, it's taking identity."

Throughout her career, Sainte-Marie has won various awards reserved for indigenous musicians, including four of Canada's indigenous lifetime achievement awards.

Ms Fafard's organisation has called for one, Sainte-Marie's 2018 Canadian Juno Award for Indigenous Album of the Year, to be rescinded.

She and others have also called on Sainte-Marie to take a DNA test to give members of the indigenous community some closure.

 

[Trausti]

Why Buffy Sainte-Marie's 'pretendian' case strikes a nerve

The essence of White Privilege is that no one wants to be White.

 

[smartcooky]

I was never a great fan of Buffy Sainte-Marie's music, but I must say that, for someone who people claim is not Native American, she sure looks like she has plenty of Native American ancestry.

Straight black hair

High cheek bones

Wide face

Smooth, weel defined jaw

Narrow nose bridge

Small plumped lips

Light brown skin

Almond shaped eyes

 

[sackett]

Um, well, I grew up around Crows, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Shoshones, plus other Plains tribes in small numbers (Blackfeet from farther north in Montana, for instance), and Southwestern tribes sporadically. I don't see much First People in that obscure celeb's appearance, even in that made up and posed shot.

Maybe I don't want to. This latter-day suckling on Native Americans as some kind of Holy People wearies and disgusts me. It's like English romanticising about Highland Scots after the Highlanders were safely defeated in the 45. Once a barbarous enemy is defanged, you can turn him into a noble savage at your pleasure.

 

[smartcooky]

Um, well, I grew up around Crows, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Shoshones, plus other Plains tribes in small numbers (Blackfeet from farther north in Montana, for instance), and Southwestern tribes sporadically. I don't see much First People in that obscure celeb's appearance, even in that made up and posed shot.

Maybe I don't want to. This latter-day suckling on Native Americans as some kind of Holy People wearies and disgusts me. It's like English romanticising about Highland Scots after the Highlanders were safely defeated in the 45. Once a barbarous enemy is defanged, you can turn him into a noble savage at your pleasure.

This isn't really an example of latter day though is it? She is, what, in her 80's now, and has said she had Native American heritage consistently from the early 1960s onward. Back then, it was definitely NOT fashionable or advantageous to admit of any "Injun Blood", let alone openly claim it.

 

[Puppycow]

I was never a great fan of Buffy Sainte-Marie's music, but I must say that, for someone who people claim is not Native American, she sure looks like she has plenty of Native American ancestry.

A pretendian might put more effort into "looking the part" than some actual Native Americans. I don't think you can put a lot of stock in someone's appearance or facial structure. Iron Eyes Cody comes to mind. Everyone thought he looked like the platonic ideal of an Indian and he made every effort to look the part. But he wasn't.

 

[Delvo]

This isn't really an example of latter day though is it? She is, what, in her 80's now, and has said she had Native American heritage consistently from the early 1960s onward. Back then, it was definitely NOT fashionable or advantageous to admit of any "Injun Blood", let alone openly claim it.

Of course it was. For one thing, she was a "folk" singer, and a big part of what that genre was all about was embracing cultures & ethnicities & styles other than Euro-American. And white families claiming to have some invisible bit of "native" ancestry was so common it became a trope precisely because people thought it sounded cool (-er than being just white).

 

[smartcooky]

Of course it was. For one thing, she was a "folk" singer, and a big part of what that genre was all about was embracing cultures & ethnicities & styles other than Euro-American. And white families claiming to have some invisible bit of "native" ancestry was so common it became a trope precisely because people thought it sounded cool (-er than being just white).

I completely disagree with your first statement.

In the early1960s, "Indians" were heavily discriminated against - it was hard on the heels of decade earlier US plan to solve the "Indian Problem" (Sound familiar?) to assimilate Indians into the general population by moving them to cities, forcibly if necessary, allowing the US government to then eliminate reservations. The 1950s and 1960s was a terrible time to be someone of Native American heritage.

 

[ahhell]

I completely disagree with your first statement.

In the early1960s, "Indians" were heavily discriminated against - it was hard on the heels of decade earlier US plan to solve the "Indian Problem" (Sound familiar?) to assimilate Indians into the general population by moving them to cities, forcibly if necessary, allowing the US government to then eliminate reservations. The 1950s and 1960s was a terrible time to be someone of Native American heritage.

Its not like its much better now. That being said, there was a bit of a fad in the 70s at least for the "Noble Savage" trope. Remember the Crying Indian Italian that convinced us all not to litter. Several pop songs that became quite popular on the subject, movies like Billy Jack were all the rage. Half my friends claimed to be 1/8 Apache, Cherokee, or what not. Never Maidu, the local tribe that owned my home town back in the day. Anyrate, actually being an Indian in the US has mostly sucked but there as long been a certain cache for being part Indian. Delvo is right about that anyway.

But you are right, if she wasn't at least part Native, she sure could pass, but then so could a crying Italian guy, but its not inconceivable that she made it up for the street cred. I think its more likely that if she isn't actually native, it was just a piece of family lore that got passed down that she believed.

 

[sackett]

The 50s? Hey, that's my native era. I recall my father remarking that having a little Indian blood was regarded, especially back East, as cool, even advantageous, while being a fullblood certainly was neither.

Especially out West in Wyoming, where to this day you can get a laff just by uttering the phrase "drunk Indian" in the right tone at the right moment.

Timing isn't even all that important.

 

[Ziggurat]

I usually see this particular argument applied to false claims of rape; but it simply isn't true in either case. Nobody who actually thinks racial equity programs and activism are a necessary social good is going to become convinced they are bad or untenable because fraud sometimes happens.

Perhaps. But I think you're asking the wrong question. Most people don't start from the premise that programs and activism are good. Most people start out from the premise that racial equality is good. And that's really not the same thing. Racial fraud cases undermine the argument that racial equity programs and activism actually promote racial equality. So there's potentially a LOT of room for people who want racial equality to become disenchanted with racial equity programs and activism.

Even social programs with far more and more-easily quantifiable instances of fraud, like food stamps or Medicare, don't actually lose any supporters because from every angle - emotional, moral, purely mathematical - the positive benefits vastly outweigh the cost of any incidental fraud, and this fact was usually part of the calculus that led them to be supporters to begin with.

Sure. But here's the problem: what current benefit are racial equity programs and activism providing? What are they actually accomplishing now? That's actually a much harder sell, first because all the low hanging fruit is already gone, and second because some of this stuff is actively doing harm now even without the fraud.

 

[theprestige]

I was never a great fan of Buffy Sainte-Marie's music, but I must say that, for someone who people claim is not Native American, she sure looks like she has plenty of Native American ancestry.

[qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/558emxw6hcczw2uz8td96/BuffyStMarie.jpg?rlkey=v53e6xd46oqeysiwg5dui2qzd&raw=1[/qimg]

Straight black hair [qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/83n3utgy4jbui1xcdpkig/CHECK-MARK-GREEN.gif?rlkey=5e3amtv46me31xe6ii4qfd9dg&raw=1[/qimg]

High cheek bones [qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/83n3utgy4jbui1xcdpkig/CHECK-MARK-GREEN.gif?rlkey=5e3amtv46me31xe6ii4qfd9dg&raw=1[/qimg]

Wide face [qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/83n3utgy4jbui1xcdpkig/CHECK-MARK-GREEN.gif?rlkey=5e3amtv46me31xe6ii4qfd9dg&raw=1[/qimg]

Smooth, weel defined jaw [qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/83n3utgy4jbui1xcdpkig/CHECK-MARK-GREEN.gif?rlkey=5e3amtv46me31xe6ii4qfd9dg&raw=1[/qimg]

Narrow nose bridge [qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/83n3utgy4jbui1xcdpkig/CHECK-MARK-GREEN.gif?rlkey=5e3amtv46me31xe6ii4qfd9dg&raw=1[/qimg]

Small plumped lips [qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/83n3utgy4jbui1xcdpkig/CHECK-MARK-GREEN.gif?rlkey=5e3amtv46me31xe6ii4qfd9dg&raw=1[/qimg]

Light brown skin [qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/83n3utgy4jbui1xcdpkig/CHECK-MARK-GREEN.gif?rlkey=5e3amtv46me31xe6ii4qfd9dg&raw=1[/qimg]

Almond shaped eyes [qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/83n3utgy4jbui1xcdpkig/CHECK-MARK-GREEN.gif?rlkey=5e3amtv46me31xe6ii4qfd9dg&raw=1[/qimg]

Assigning a race to someone based on how closely they appear to be of that race seems like a bad idea.

If nothing else, race isn't tribe or culture or ethnicity. Being generically "native American" isn't the same as claiming the cultural heritage of the Shoshone, or the Pueblo, or the Inuit. She could have gotten each of those physical features from a different tribe's genetics, and not have any real claim to belong to any one culture. She could have gotten some of those features from other "races" that have similar features. Scandinavians have high cheekbones and straight hair. Asians have almond shaped eyes and light brown skin.

You're proposing that someone with a medley of apparent "native American" phenotypes is thus entitled to produce a mish-mash of purportedly native-American-ish music or whatever, and legitimately claim to be an authentic native American voice. I have my doubts about this approach. I'd have doubts about the approach even if it were based on genotypes, not phenotypes.

 

[varwoche]

I was never a great fan of Buffy Sainte-Marie's music, but I must say that, for someone who people claim is not Native American, she sure looks like she has plenty of Native American ancestry...

There are pictures where she appears to be native american. This isn't one of them.

 

[varwoche]

I completely disagree with your first statement.

In the early1960s, "Indians" were heavily discriminated against - it was hard on the heels of decade earlier US plan to solve the "Indian Problem" (Sound familiar?) to assimilate Indians into the general population by moving them to cities, forcibly if necessary, allowing the US government to then eliminate reservations. The 1950s and 1960s was a terrible time to be someone of Native American heritage.

Despite which, people claiming n-a ancestory was a thing, especially amongst young people. We all want to be special is some way or another.

Discrimination wasn't an impediment for Elizabeth Warren. Nor for Rachel Whatshername. And apparently not for Buffy.