Yet another ethnic scammer in academia

[downer]

These comments show that there are many people who are prepared to be the arbiters of what constitutes an authentic claim to an ethnicity. If we accept that situation as normal and acceptable, then the question changes to who is the appropriate arbiter for a specific situation. The Caledonian Club of Glasgow may have different criteria for Scotsmanship than the University of Munich's diversity committee. Is there anything wrong with that disparity?

When is it appropriate to have a specific ethnicity as a criterion for a faculty position? In those cases, who appropriately decides on the criteria for qualifying?

I don't have an answer for either of those questions in regard to faculty hiring in my field.

You state the problem nicely. Ethnicity is not easy to define precisely -- probably impossible. For some there may be clear paradigms but for others the whole concept is a mixture of disparate elements. They might be useful categories in sociological analysis but far less useful in individual application.

The whole process of assessing a candidate's suitability for a position is full of uncertainty -- predicting future performance. But using any other criteria than a candidate's skills is prima facie problematic, and there needs to be a very strong reason to include that in the job description.

[Caracal]

These comments show that there are many people who are prepared to be the arbiters of what constitutes an authentic claim to an ethnicity. If we accept that situation as normal and acceptable, then the question changes to who is the appropriate arbiter for a specific situation. The Caledonian Club of Glasgow may have different criteria for Scotsmanship than the University of Munich's diversity committee. Is there anything wrong with that disparity?

When is it appropriate to have a specific ethnicity as a criterion for a faculty position? In those cases, who appropriately decides on the criteria for qualifying?

I don't have an answer for either of those questions in regard to faculty hiring in my field.

I have an answer for each of those.
Never.
No one.

I think MLK might back me up on that.

Probably not. He supported affirmative action by the mid 1960s.

[Caracal]

I have to say that this whole exercise of doing (sort of) genealogical research on somebody to prove or disprove their ethnicity seems macabre and grotesque, and reminds me of South Africa or Nazi Germany. First, the anonymous post seems to be based on her twitter account. The CV she has posted on her website does not say anything about her ethnicity. (It says she speaks Spanish, which is not the same, obviously.)

Second, this whole exercise seems to have a rather ignorant conception of what "Chicana" means. Yes, she has light skin and, yes, she has an Anglo name. Neither of this means very much. Linda Ronstadt is Chicano, and Vicente Fox is Mexican. The mayor of Mexico City is Sheinbaum. Previous mayors of Bogotá include Paul Bromberg and Antanas Mockus. One of the leading Mexican American politicians in Bill Richardson. The richest Mexican is probably Carlos Slim. If you hang out in Santa Fe or Polanco in Mexico City, or San Pedro Garza García in Nuevo León, you will probably see lots of people who are white with non-Spanish names. Not many of these people would consider themselves "Chicanos" (the term actually has a negative connotation in much of Mexico) but they are certainly Mexicans.

Personally, I think there are some good Spanish terms to describe people who want to dig into other people's family history to make a half-baked political point. Two that come to mind are metiche or hablardora.

Looking at DNA to show ethnicity seems inappropriate. My niece's DNA would indicate Southern Chinese ancestry, but she was adopted as an infant and grew up in an upper middle class, small town, southern American home with parents whose DNA indicates Western European ancestry. Her DNA may be Asian, but she's a cornbread today, quiche tomorrow, pizza for breakfast American girl.

I agree with all of this. I do a fair amount of work with historical census records and the research in the post was so bad I was tempted to go see if I could do better. Obviously this is partly a bad idea because its a form of academic procrastination. But, it also just feels gross.

Without getting into the specifics, which aren't clear, there's no objective standard for being able to claim an identity or background.

I can imagine a number of public contexts in which I might identify as Jewish. I certainly think of myself as Jewish. I'm not required to tell everyone that my father was born Jewish but my mother converted, but she actually converted in a reform ceremony, so Orthodox Jews wouldn't recognize it, but actually that doesn't matter in my case because...

You see the point, I'm allowed to claim an identity without explaining everything about it. On the other hand there is a point where  claims can become clearly dishonest or misleading. If I were to discover that I had a great grandparent who was black and suddenly started referring to myself as a black person, I think most people would find that distasteful. It wouldn't be about the amount of ancestry-there are lots of people who consider themselves black who have a lot of white ancestors-the issue would be that I would be adopting an identity that had nothing to do with my experience of the world.

Most people don't actually have any desire to do that kind of thing. There's a reason why the egregious cases involve people who seem unbalanced.

[marshwiggle]

You see the point, I'm allowed to claim an identity without explaining everything about it. On the other hand there is a point where  claims can become clearly dishonest or misleading. If I were to discover that I had a great grandparent who was black and suddenly started referring to myself as a black person, I think most people would find that distasteful. It wouldn't be about the amount of ancestry-there are lots of people who consider themselves black who have a lot of white ancestors-the issue would be that I would be adopting an identity that had nothing to do with my experience of the world.

Most people don't actually have any desire to do that kind of thing. There's a reason why the egregious cases involve people who seem unbalanced.

As long as "identity" is treated as an all-or-nothing bulldozer that can be used by those who "have" it against those who don't then scammers will be incentivized.  The best way to avoid that is stop granting so much power on the basis of something which, as numerous examples on here have shown, is much more nuanced and complex than the identitarians would like to admit.
There's no reason that any two people in any identity "category" have any specific experience, belief, or preference in common. And no one gets to speak for the entire group.

[fizzycist]

...

You see the point, I'm allowed to claim an identity without explaining everything about it. On the other hand there is a point where  claims can become clearly dishonest or misleading. If I were to discover that I had a great grandparent who was black and suddenly started referring to myself as a black person, I think most people would find that distasteful. It wouldn't be about the amount of ancestry-there are lots of people who consider themselves black who have a lot of white ancestors-the issue would be that I would be adopting an identity that had nothing to do with my experience of the world.

Most people don't actually have any desire to do that kind of thing. There's a reason why the egregious cases involve people who seem unbalanced.

Caracal is the only one making sense to me in this thread.

Hibush's questions might be interesting rhetorically, but it rarely comes up in practice.

There is a boundary somewhere when it comes to ethinicity/race/heritage claims. Nobody will agree exactly where is the line, but we all know approximately where it is. Vast majority stay away from the boundary because going too close is uncomfortable.

In this case she already got close to the boundary. Claims for familiarity with antebellum South from growing up in Encinitas? Publically and vocally identifying as Chicana in professional context based on vague claims of one grandparent from Mexico.

It opened her up to scrutiny and turns out she was a faker. I read somewhere she resigned today from her Uni. Evidently the consequences for this behavior are severe, and while a few cases may be highly visible I bet fakery represents a miniscule fraction of ethnicity claims, like 10^-4 or something.

[Parasaurolophus]

I read somewhere she resigned today from her Uni.

IHE link.

[financeguy]

Couple thoughts...

First, I'm really tired of the idea that MLK (or JFK or anyone else) having said something is an ironclad indication that I or anyone else should agree. He was a human who f'ed up a few times like anyone, including some "biggies" like boinking around on your wife as a reverend and plagiarizing material including several unattributed pages of a dissertation. Worthy of significant respect? Obviously. Walking on water? Not really.

Second, I've just been notified recently that a role at an institution I previously attended had earmarked a role that recently was filled to a woman. This was in part due to an on-campus gender controversy so of course the easiest was is pull the old black police chief move. If the person who will be responding to the issue is a member of the grievance class, it will dampen the blowback. This is just getting exhausting.

Third, I'm glad to see a role either earmarked or even "tilted" toward a particular ethnic hire blow up in everyone's face. I'm tired of these existing at all so hopefully everyone does likewise and simply starts examining the validity of ethic claims so much that the work points received for making the hire are exceeded by the controversy over legitimacy afterward. Whatever needs to be done to take this process down in general is fine with me.

[marshwiggle]

There is a boundary somewhere when it comes to ethinicity/race/heritage claims. Nobody will agree exactly where is the line, but we all know approximately where it is. Vast majority stay away from the boundary because going too close is uncomfortable.

In this case she already got close to the boundary. Claims for familiarity with antebellum South from growing up in Encinitas? Publically and vocally identifying as Chicana in professional context based on vague claims of one grandparent from Mexico.

It opened her up to scrutiny and turns out she was a faker. I read somewhere she resigned today from her Uni. Evidently the consequences for this behavior are severe, and while a few cases may be highly visible I bet fakery represents a miniscule fraction of ethnicity claims, like 10^-4 or something.

So if the "vague claims of one grandparent from Mexico" turned out to be true, then there'd be no problem claiming and benefitting from that identity? Even with no supporting evidence of how (or whether) that influenced her life?

[fizzycist]

There is a boundary somewhere when it comes to ethinicity/race/heritage claims. Nobody will agree exactly where is the line, but we all know approximately where it is. Vast majority stay away from the boundary because going too close is uncomfortable.

In this case she already got close to the boundary. Claims for familiarity with antebellum South from growing up in Encinitas? Publically and vocally identifying as Chicana in professional context based on vague claims of one grandparent from Mexico.

It opened her up to scrutiny and turns out she was a faker. I read somewhere she resigned today from her Uni. Evidently the consequences for this behavior are severe, and while a few cases may be highly visible I bet fakery represents a miniscule fraction of ethnicity claims, like 10^-4 or something.

So if the "vague claims of one grandparent from Mexico" turned out to be true, then there'd be no problem claiming and benefitting from that identity? Even with no supporting evidence of how (or whether) that influenced her life?

Pretty sure you already know the answer to that, but... Some ppl would still be skeptical. Others would look at her advocacy and good things she was doing and be fine with it. Either way she'd still have her job and we wouldn't be talking about her.

[Ruralguy]

If she was honest about the nature of her identity from the beginning, then I don't see how it would be right to deny her anything now.  These are the slippery slopes you walk upon when you attach identity to academics.

[marshwiggle]

If she was honest about the nature of her identity from the beginning, then I don't see how it would be right to deny her anything now.  These are the slippery slopes you walk upon when you attach identity to academics.

If search commitees are expected to verify candidates' degrees, references, etc., then it makes sense that if ethnicity is explicitly attached to a position, they should have a similarly rigorous process to vet that as well. Which would require at the very least that any claims made are specific enough to be verified.

[Hibush]

If she was honest about the nature of her identity from the beginning, then I don't see how it would be right to deny her anything now.  These are the slippery slopes you walk upon when you attach identity to academics.

If search commitees are expected to verify candidates' degrees, references, etc., then it makes sense that if ethnicity is explicitly attached to a position, they should have a similarly rigorous process to vet that as well. Which would require at the very least that any claims made are specific enough to be verified.

Even if they were allowed to attach an ethnicity to the position (which seems unlikely), is it appropriate for them to change the criteria for ethnic qualification from the ones they used at hiring to the ones insisted on by an anonymous blogger a year or two later?

[Caracal]

If she was honest about the nature of her identity from the beginning, then I don't see how it would be right to deny her anything now.  These are the slippery slopes you walk upon when you attach identity to academics.

If search commitees are expected to verify candidates' degrees, references, etc., then it makes sense that if ethnicity is explicitly attached to a position, they should have a similarly rigorous process to vet that as well. Which would require at the very least that any claims made are specific enough to be verified.

Degrees and references are the wrong parallel. It is more like some detail from a candidates background. It might be considered a plus if someone was from the local area, for example, but a search committee isn't likely to go look at the birth certificate. You would just assume someone isn't going to lie about something like that, because they are likely to be found out eventually.

Some people on here seem convinced this is a very common problem, but this seems like a classic example of confirmation bias. There was a high profile case and as a result people who knew someone who had some story about their background that always seemed a little weird went digging. There are a lot of academics. Like all people, some of them are liars and scammers. It doesn't mean that there's an epidemic of this kind of stuff.

[marshwiggle]

Some people on here seem convinced this is a very common problem, but this seems like a classic example of confirmation bias. There was a high profile case and as a result people who knew someone who had some story about their background that always seemed a little weird went digging. There are a lot of academics. Like all people, some of them are liars and scammers. It doesn't mean that there's an epidemic of this kind of stuff.

For decades, the concept of people "passing" as white has been a thing, because there were advantages to being white. Now, as the number of situations increases where being "non-white" is an advantage, there will be more people "passing" as non-white. Any behavior which is incentivized will increase.

[dismalist]

Whatever happened to the one-drop rule?