I grew up hearing stories about hearing stories of grandfathers and great grandfathers who were black, but were light enough skinned to ‘pass as white.’ They were able to circumvent the systemic racism of the day.
Systemic Racism is taken as an article of faith by half of the country. It’s certainly something we should constantly be on the lookout for. We want to live in a fair and just, equal opportunity society structured to maximize everyone’s potential.
Yet, inequities exist.
Famous Anti-Racist, Ibram Kendi, recently pointed out systemic racism highlighted by Inside Higher Ed, about white applicants lying on their college applications. These white people are so ignorant of their privilege they actually believe lying about their race gives them an advantage.
What’s worse, they continue to believe this lie even after they’re accepted to college.
This is the definition of Systemic Racism. Inside Higher Ed has been sounding the alarm on how the system is set up to advantage white people, willing to lie to disadvantage Women and Black Indigenous People of Color.
While the study is clear to point out that over 50% of white male college applicants are liars, Inside Higher Ed has actually revealed at least 2.5 white-women frauds in the last year.
In a Sept. 4th, 2020 article entitled, “White Lies,” they reported on an associate history professor at George Washington University, who is Jewish and not Black, as she had long claimed. As she was an historian studying Africa and the African diaspora, yet was so racist she believed she got her job because she presented as Black.
As of this writing, she is no longer employed at the university.
A week later, they published “More White Lies” about a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who claimed North African and Afro-Latinx heritage. Despite growing up as a white girl in a wealthy Italian family who now uses They/Them pronouns.
They claimed this was done due to past trauma and mental health issues.
They are no longer in consideration for a position at UW Madison.
In an Oct. 2020 article entitled, “Even More White Lies” about a Luther College Fellow of African American Histories who resigned her Assistant Professorship at Furman University after lying about her race.
According to a Luther College spokesperson, she was hired because she, “demonstrated qualifications for the specific position.”
However Christine Folch, pure Latinx, assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University, tells a different story. This “strategic use and appropriation of brownness” becomes a way to “accumulate more power, more legitimacy, grants, coolness points,” because white women posing as nonwhite are using their own white privilege to amass more power “by selectively appropriating brownness and Blackness, as suits them.” It’s a privilege to be able to “selectively choose which aspect and to what degree of brownness one takes on.” Studies show the Academy is still majority white and male.
Each of these academic frauds were outed by brave anonymous posts on Medium who questioned the racial purity of these academics. [1][2][3]
In an illustration of the peril facing anti-race intellectuals in 2021, Right-wing trolls were quick to misrepresent Dr. Kendi’s tweet.
Fueled by Donald Trump’s lies about Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law Professor, they spread false information that white students gain an advantage on applications.
Kendi took a day to respond to this violence and deleted his original post to correct the record. The racist white students who lie on their applications only believe there’s an advantage when they lie.
All correctly educated people understand that Black Indigenous Professors of Color must work even harder than their counterparts in getting faculty positions.
The academic career advancement of the women in this article therefore serve as proof of white supremacy.
