Education

Even More White Lies

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I don’t get why transracialism can’t be a thing. There is an infinite historical lineage for people leaving one tribe to join another or converting to a new religion. Anarchists, more than anyone else, should be embracing the right to be a transracial person. What would Stirner say? What would Emma say?

Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed

Another week, another unmasking of a white professor allegedly posing as a person of color: this time it’s Kelly Kean Sharp, a scholar of African American history who resigned abruptly Tuesday from her assistant professorship at Furman University.

Like other apparent racial fraudsters before her, Sharp was outed by an anonymous post on Medium. The writer of the post identifies him or herself as having “distantly” known Sharp when she was graduate student at the University of California, Davis. Sharp had never publicly identified as Latinx back then, the writer said, so they were recently puzzled to learn that Sharp had since started referring to herself as Chicana, including on her now-private Twitter profile. According to screenshots included in the post, Sharp has tweeted about her abuela, or grandmother, from Mexico, and posted elsewhere about her “abuela who came to the U.S. during WWII who worked hard so I could become a teacher.”

The writer said they started talking to others who knew Sharp, and these colleagues were similarly “confused.” Some then allegedly asked Sharp about the “newfound identity,” and Sharp allegedly said her grandmother was originally from Mexico. Yet when the scholars looked into that explanation, “we found that Kelly had no grandparents who were born outside of the U.S. or had Hispanic names.”

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  1. A few months ago, I looked at the pictures for Kamala Harris, her Indian mother, and the many who she claims is her Jamaican father. Kamala was substantially lighter than both her mother and ‘father’. Indeed, Kamala looks like the product of her mother and a white father.

    Simple DNA tests (compared to the much more detailed ones available today) that could identify the racial origins of a person were available about 20 years ago, maybe more.

    I think Kamala Harris may not have any “African” DNA, at all. She should be asked to take such a test and prove her racial bona-fides.

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      • >” I don’t think her race is important, David Clarke is black.”

        I certainly didn’t intend to give the impression that I thought Kamala Harris’s race is important. Quite the opposite. My objection is that the people who promoted Biden to select her are wrong to suggest that her race was important. Which, they very much did.

        Biden pandered, first, by announcing that he would pick a woman for VP. At that point, there was a petition by a large number of black men (about 100?)
        https://www.change.org/p/dear-vice-president-biden-and-democratic-party-voters-we-urge-and-insist-joe-biden-nominate-a-black-vp/sign

        “Dear Vice President Biden and Democratic Party Voters: We, the Black, white, Latino and Asian Democratic voters who will assure your nomination and election to be President of the United States of America, hereby urge and insist that you nominate a highly respected and universally revered Democratic Black political leader to be your vice …”
        [end of quotation]

        Having demanded that, they didn’t seem to object when Biden nominated Harris, who may have merely claimed to have been part black. Well, Elizabeth Warren claimed to be part American Indian, but ended up being about 1 part in 1000 (0.098%, maybe)

        I assert that if they are so certain that it was so important that Biden select a “black woman”, they should not be satisfied merely by a woman who CLAIMS to be part-black. Tests to determine race, actually down to the country and region of DNA origin, exist and have worked very well for 25+ years.

        To be sure, Harris cannot necessarily know who her biological father is. Her mother may herself not be sure, or her mother might have lied to her. I think it’s most likely that her mother got pregnant, and rushed to find a suitable ‘baby-daddy’ to take the credit (or blame).

        Harris’s skin color seems substantially lighter than her mother. I simply think it’s most likely that Harris’ biological father was probably white. So, her slightly brownish skin may be entirely from India DNA.

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        • I see, I didn’t had the context that you was thinking about the people Biden was pandering when I read this. I tend to think that talking with people that think ‘I will vote for candidate x because he is black or she is a woman’ is a waste of time, as they don’t seem to have a lot of actual ideas, so I didn’t thought of them when writing that reply…

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          • Well, those people may not have a lot of ideas, but they do indeed vote! Since this election has been so close, a lot of individual factors could be claimed to be ‘deciding’, but it is also possible that Biden will be determined to have needed the extra black votes that Harris’s selection has presumably provided.

            The ‘Left’ will certainly not challenge her racial bona-fides now: They have ‘won’, even though the (slight) Republican majority in the Senate will be able to block nearly anything Biden or his backers would want to accomplish.

            I think it would be very interesting to see somebody try to racially “out” Harris. Collection of her DNA will probably be relatively easy: She will probably go to plenty of dinners where she handles dishes. Unless there is a concerted effort by her people to corral her dirty dishes, we could eventually see a statement of where her actual, biological ancesters came from.

            Will blacks react badly if they learn that she is determined to be only white and Indian?

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  2. As a multi-racial person, I have therefore had some time to reflect (mixed raced parents, and mixed race immediate family).

    The problem as I see it is that previously, genetics were very generally very closely correlated with culture, and therefore biological markers could serve as cultural markers (African/American/Asian tribes will use colored hats or clothing designs in this way). There is also an added layer where traditionally these people groups would stratify in class by skin tones as markers for who and who didn’t not have to work outside, where as now, people in rich countries will use tanned skin as a marker of more vacation time.

    This is all to say that for the time being, jumping races and even genders in my view is some people getting confused by the bio markers in place of culture, and instead of just being a ‘wigger’ or ‘uncle Tom’ or ‘prissy’ or ‘tomboy’ in the past, some individuals with screws loose are trying to change their physical markers because it is easier than taking many years to fully adopt the culture (and can possibly never happen).

    All of our cultures are becoming shallow representations of what they were, and race is still distinct and has not caught up (there are ALOT more mixed brown kids now, than when I was growing up, but still not many). Personally, I find it extremely useful to claim minority status at times, while embracing my cultural ‘whiteness’ at others, and have a lower bar to reach because I look darker but act ‘white’. In a way, I see it as exploiting this cultural/racial lag that shown itself in the last couple decades or so, possibly brought about by increased globalization.

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