Put aside the ethical problems with professors who lie about their race/ethnicity, and thereby incalculably hurt other people and groups and the value of truth itself; ask yourself whether the problem with such people is not that they are contemptible, but that they are insane.
A person commenting on a New York Times essay on the latest identity fraud (this one’s a woman who claimed to be Native American to get ahead in academia) goes there: Is it not plausible that a person capable of spending her entire adult life pretending to be someone she’s not may be mentally unbalanced? Indeed, don’t we all expect to encounter Christs of Ypsilanti and Napoleons of Boca Raton only in institutions?
This woman, and Jessica Krug, and probably other fraudsters like them, went victimization-theft one better and harassed actual black and Native people they knew because the fraudsters found them inauthentic. Just as each of the three Christs impugned the Christness of the others.
Which is a real method in the madness thing, ain’t it? Talk about diverting attention from your own, er, lack of identity-evidence — look at that faker over there! And that one over there!
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When personal, belligerent, enactment of minority identity becomes more important than intellectual legitimacy… well, you get what you wish for. You get the performative professoriate; you get high-kicking Jessica Krugs putting blackness over on… on almost everyone.
Yes – all of these tired pathetic tales feature non-insane observers attempting to point out that the political steam issuing from the head of the department firebrand is BS. But y’all know how love is…
We hired Jessie in a fever
Hotter than a pepper sprout
We been talkin about Jessie
Ever since the fire went out…
Yet many of you would hire her again; and the latest Krug remains in a good academic job, and keeps getting published by (wait for it) the same press that published Krug. Even though everyone at this point knows she’s a truly vile liar.
It’s kind of like – if American academia likes brazen amoral liars that much, what’s it got against Donald Trump? Why does it think academia is superior to Trumpland? Both places promote people – even nutty scuzzy people – who satisfy deep dark desires. Trumpland’s just more honest.