Hallowed Halls and Dolezals
By: Eileen Cowen
Tags: Feminism, Secrets, Race, Cultural Appropriation, Academia

It happened. AGAIN. Another white academic was outed as misidentifying their race.

Kelly Kean Sharp of Furman University was an assistant professor of African American history and self identified as Chicana. That is, up until today when her elaborate lies were exposed. In fact, she isn’t a Person of Color at all… she is an upper-class suburban white woman with no Hispanic or Latino roots. (She was anonymously outed here on Medium, with receipts.) Just last month, another professor of African American history at George Washington University who masqueraded as a Black Latina was exposed as a white woman. (And, no, I won’t link the Medium article she wrote to justify and explain her behavior.) Of course, many remember the explosive case of Rachel Dolezal, another white professor who self-identified as a Black woman. She executed her identity so expertly that she become a leader of the NAACP in Spokane. All three women have since lost their professorships, but a larger question remains: why do some white women perpetrate such a racial charade?

Academic diversity is definitely an issue in American higher learning. The majority of professors (especially those who are tenured) are white men. Universities nationwide have been grappling with how to entice minorities of any protected status, whether it be race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender. Women are underrepresented in academia but their numbers have been steadily rising since the 1980s, when a full 66% of professors were white men. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 40% of professors are white males, 35% are white females, 7% are male Asian/Pacific Islanders, 5% are female Asian/Pacific Islanders. Just 3% each of Black males, Black females, Hispanic males, and Hispanic females are university professors. Truly, academia remains a very white space, despite the very real efforts of university diversity programs. Efforts are heavily focused on hiring People of Color who may see things through a different lens other than simply through gender.

This isn’t to say white women never had their day when they were the darlings of diverse hiring practices. During the “working mom” 1980s, white women were the preferred candidate for diversity. They were a safer bet to the patriarchal order of corporate boardrooms and academic breakrooms: they wouldn’t make much fuss, and most importantly wouldn’t shake up the highly racially segregated world that some people took for granted. Now, especially in academia, white women are almost on par with their white male counterparts. Some women have taken the tasteless opportunity to set themselves apart by appropriating race. It is the ugly secret of many white women, unfortunately. Rachel Dolezal may have been one of the first to be outed, but she definitely will not be the last.

This isn’t an essay on race. Many people smarter than I have written excellent essays on the social construct of race, the benefits of proximity to whiteness, and the perceived advantages or disadvantages people experience based on their outward appearance — both for white people and People of Color. However, many thoughts on race ignore the fact that cultural markers and experiences are the most important factors of a person’s upbringing. Those markers are the benefits that are brought to any work situation. Academia makes the same mistakes many other fields make: they confuse outward racial markers for the cultural suggestions that truly create diverse workplaces.

Some white women have a chip on their shoulders. (As a white woman, this is something of which I am well aware.) Every person wants to make a name for themselves, especially those in a highly competitive world such as academia. Some white upper middle-class women may feel like they don’t have much to offer: they have lived a somewhat safe life besides the usual trauma of humanity. By posing as a minority, they insinuate to others that they possess the cultural markers of those who have truly suffered through cultural repression. I could imagine this is a tempting path for those women who have little life experience outside of their suburban upbringing. They are searching for the right hook, and they have the financial means to craft a persona that looks great on paper. It is the sad truth of competition.