here we go again (another race faker in academia)

[bacardiandlime]

https://www.profelizabethmhoover.com/identity

This kind of thing happens with depressing regularity. Obviously universities can't subject people to DNA tests on hiring. But what can we do to stop this apparent cottage industry in identity grifting?

[Puget]

This one seems a little different, as it goes back to her what her parents told her and how they raised her, and she just didn't investigate that until recently. Maybe that's not the whole story, but it seems a bit more ambiguous than the other cases where someone really just made the whole thing up themselves.

[dismalist]

https://www.profelizabethmhoover.com/identity

This kind of thing happens with depressing regularity. Obviously universities can't subject people to DNA tests on hiring. But what can we do to stop this apparent cottage industry in identity grifting?

Incentives, incentives. If we don't like the behavior, change the incentives. No cash for identity!

[bacardiandlime]

This one seems a little different, as it goes back to her what her parents told her and how they raised her, and she just didn't investigate that until recently.

That's a point, but she wasn't raised in the culture. There seem to be literally millions of white people in America who have "family lore" of a Cherokee princess great grandmother. That shouldn't be a job advantage.

[secundem_artem]

My father told me that the first member of the family was a Dutch river pirate named Derek.  Not sure if it's true or just an old legend but I've never felt the need to wear an eye patch and buckle any swashes.

Unless somebody has a deep interest in genealogy, who actually takes the time to verify these claims that (no doubt) father believed was the truth? 

This is just silly and another opportunity for performative self-abasement

[Wahoo Redux]

There seem to be literally millions of white people in America who have "family lore" of a Cherokee princess great grandmother.

I am one.  No joke.  There was what I came to recognize as horribly racist story of a great-great-great-something-grandmother from a Native American tribe in my ancestry on my father's side.  We believed it enough to see facial morphology in my grandfather that would indicate NA genetics.

Then my wife got me one of the DNA kits for Christmas, and my entirely European genealogy was laid bare.     

I never claimed anything at any time.

[Hegemony]

Yikes. I agree that the issue of "I was brought up to think I was..." is a bit of a different animal from the sheer fabricators. But people need to be very careful these days.

I too was brought up with the story of a Native American ancestor, an Iroquois woman, her name lost to history, who married a certain ancestor (whose full name we do know) in my mother's father's line. When I did the DNA test, it did show up as 2% Native American. I bet a lot of us have that somewhere in our pasts. At a certain point in American history there was a lot of intermarriage. I'm not going to forget that ancestor — she deserves not to be erased too. But that's different from representing myself as a member of the Iroquois nation.

[lightning]

If she's truly sorry, she would resign from her academic post.
But she didn't and she won't.

The public self-flogging apology has been put out there as a defense against those who would call for her resignation. 

[financeguy]

"Identifying as a Native person gave me access to spaces and resources that I would not have otherwise, resources that were intended for students of color. Before taking part in programs or funding opportunities that were identity-related or geared towards under-represented people I should have ensured that I was claimed in return by the communities I was claiming. By avoiding this inquiry, I have received academic fellowships, opportunities, and material benefits that I may not have received had I not been perceived as a Native scholar."

Well, you could get rid of those preferences and that would drastically reduce the number of people trying to pull these things. The UC system itself is the subject of controversy since they've decided to give free tuition to native undergrads. Illegal you say? Well, they're not doing it on "race" but on membership in a tribe, which has angered a lot of people whose circumstances are not formally recognized.

Just like the trans issue, in order for the grift to be successful it has to be subjective. What other people with megaphones "think" is the truth and no DNA test or other objective criteria can be made to subvert a claim made by an angry enough mob.

[Parasaurolophus]

It just seems like everyone should know that having a distant ancestor is not sufficient to claim an Indigenous identity, especially someone whose scholarship is so closely tied to Indigenous communities.

[kaysixteen]

Around thirty years ago my brother developed a hobby of family genealogical research, and came to discover evidence that one of our great-great-grandmothers was a native American.  I had no idea... but when he presented this to our mom (the gggm in question would have been her ggm), she said she had known of this all along and did not realize that she had never shared it with us.   We did not know what tribe this ancestor was a member of, but we did know where she came from.   Thing is, maybe 20 years later bro did one of those commercial DNA ancestor tests, and it did not reveal any NA ancestry.  So what's the truth here?   Back in 1900, white people did not claim any NA ancestry when they did not believe that they had any such ancestry, and, indeed, often hid ancestry that they did know of.   So I am skeptical that the family lore is false.   But the alternative is that the commercial DNA test is flawed-- what's the truth here?   (I am certainly underwhelmed by ads that claim the test showed the person is '54% Scottish', as though there is such a thing as 'Scottish' DNA).

[Wahoo Redux]

DNA science is science.  You should believe it.  And what these companies are determining is where your ancestral DNA most likely originates, not a sub-racial identification or something along those lines.  In other words, whatever DNA is Scottish most likely sprung from that part of the world.  My DNA test correctly identified the state----not just the region, but the actual state-----that my DNA on my father's side traveled to from England.  How weird is that?

You have no NA ancestry.  As I posted, we had a legend about our family that I had heard since I was a little kid about a NA woman in the bloodline.  In retrospect, the story is so insipid, so racist, that you would only believe it if you were a little kid, which I was.

[Parasaurolophus]

There are legitimate problems with obtaining samples from Indigenous peoples, with the quality of those records, and with how representative those samples are. A lot also hinges on which markers a company chooses to focus on and test for (you may not have inherited the ones in question). If the ancestor is far enough back in time, you may not have inherited many or any such markers, even though they genuinely were Indigenous (you might then have better luck testing a more proximate generation, like a parent or grandparent).

One potential added complication is that, depending on the period in question, tribal membership could be conferred by marriage or adoption. So one might well have someone who counted, at the time, as Indigenous, without having been born Indigenous.

But, yeah. The odds aren't bad that the "distant ancestor" in question was not, in fact, Indigenous. (Though again, it depends on how distant they are.)

[Wahoo Redux]

I am apparently 2% Viking, which might explain some of the temperament on my father's side.

[fishbrains]

There seem to be literally millions of white people in America who have "family lore" of a Cherokee princess great grandmother.

I am one.  No joke.  There was what I came to recognize as horribly racist story of a great-great-great-something-grandmother from a Native American tribe in my ancestry on my father's side.  We believed it enough to see facial morphology in my grandfather that would indicate NA genetics.

Then my wife got me one of the DNA kits for Christmas, and my entirely European genealogy was laid bare.     

I never claimed anything at any time.

I live in a region where just about everyone says they are 1/16 Cherokee and descended from Scottish royalty. Because, of course, Scottish royalty got tired of all the luxury and decided to come here to work in coal mines. But I've learned not to point out that it's been quite the descent.