Academia is a great place to look for new inductees into the Racial Impostors Hall of Shame. The latest is Elizabeth Hoover, an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at prestigious University of California, Berkeley, who turns out not to be an Indian:

Hoover is “one of 11 self-identified Native American/Alaska Native ladder-rank faculty members at Berkeley,” according to the Berkeley News.

For decades, Professor Hoover has attributed her Native American heritage to being part of both the Mohawk and Mi’kmaq Indian tribes.

But now she has come clean:

Hoover released an official statement on the issue on Oct. 20 titled “Statement about Identity.” In it, she discussed the results of her investigation into whether she truly had Native American roots.

“Now, without any official documentation verifying the identity I was raised with, I do not think it is right for me to continue to claim to be a scholar of Mohawk/Mi’kmaq descent,” Hoover wrote.

Whether it was deliberate fraud or just based on wishful thinking, presenting herself as an Indian no doubt helped her achieve a position at prestigious Berkeley. Confessing the truth is less of a PR disaster than getting exposed by angry real Indians. It’s not as if they will take her assistant professorship away, any more than they took away ersatz Indian Elizabeth Warren’s US Senate seat.

Just as hate hoaxes emphasize that the oppression of “oppressed” identity groups needs to be fabricated, the proliferation of racial impostors confirms that it is an advantage to be “marginalized.”

On a tip from R F.

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