Yet another ethnic scammer in academia

[polly_mer]

https://insidehighered.com/news/2020/10/29/unmasking-another-white-professor-allegedly-posing-person-color

Some interesting details here including how recently the professor claimed to be Chicana.

[ciao_yall]

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.

OTOH I always thought I was a Basic White Girl until I moved to North Carolina and got the stares. "What are you?" Um... what do you mean?

"Like... are you Indian or something?" No, just an olive-skinned girl of French and Eastern European descent.

And then they would see my last name.

"Are you... jewish?"

[Anselm]

And coming from Mexico, in and of itself, doesn't mean much.   You can be Caucasian, Spanish, Chican@, Latin@...and still be Mexican.  Mexican is not nationality, not a single ethnicity.

And not everybody in Mexico has surnames of Iberian origin.  A branch of my mother's family relocated to Mexico from the U.S. many years ago.  They're Mexican now.  Caracal's right about the danger of jumping to conclusions from superficial research.

I want to know why Romney was not identified as the first Mexican American presidential candidate.

I recall applying for job with a major corporation.  When they asked for my race for EEOC purposes they got very detailed about the meanings.   So, Fujimori could not call himself Hispanic according to their rules.  Obviously people have already tried to game the system.

[bento]

. Also the reaction (shutting down twitter, website, no response, etc.) looks real bad. My money is on her being a faker.

Shutting down social media and personal website is a common strategy when being harassed by trolls and receiving threats, as I am certain is happening to her.   The ugliness and sheer quantity is hard to comprehend if one hasn't seen it.