She was probably nudged
Less than a week but still too long.
Less than a week after George Washington University announced Jessica Krug would not resume teaching this semester after the professor revealed she had been lying for years about being Black, the school announced she has resigned.
“Dr. Krug has resigned her position, effective immediately. Her classes for this semester will be taught by other faculty members, and students in those courses will receive additional information this week,” the university said in a statement obtained by CNN on Wednesday.
We need a word for this move – this form of fraud in which a person with more social privilege pretends to be a person with less social privilege. Maybe we already have the word, maybe “appropriation” is good enough, but it doesn’t capture the more/less aspect, or at least it doesn’t explicitly name it.
We don’t feel the same kind of repulsion at the idea of someone with less privilege pretending to be someone with more. Why? Because that’s the natural direction of flow, the reasons are obvious, and privilege is a form of injustice. Stealing other people’s disprivilege is gross. It’s a kind of mockery as well as a kind of theft.
It might make an interesting academic discussion, but let’s not invite Jessica Krug to participate.
“Slumming” seems to be mostly appropriate. It gives, at least to me, a very negative impression, but maybe that’s a good thing.
I think this is a wonderful generalization of an idea that covers both pretending to be black and pretending to be female.
I think we need a term more intense than “appropriation,” since that is supposed to apply to white people with dreadlocks or wearing kimonos. If someone is actually pretending to be someone they’re not, they’re an “imposter.”
Maybe “Privileged Imposter” captures the nature of the crime (or “Imposter of Privilege.”)
“Cultural sandbagging”?
“Sandbagging” is the practice in golf (and sometimes other sports) of pretending to be a weaker player than you are, in order to receive a higher handicap in organized play, or to hustle someone into making a poor bet with you.
I don’t think it quite works, though, because it sounds like I’m saying that the less privileged are “weaker.”
‘Enclosure’ would be my choice, as in the enclosures of the British common lands carried out by the nobility and gentry, which began in the 13thC and accelerated towards the 19th C; by which time it was complete. So ‘disprivilege enclosure’ makes an interesting complement to ‘enprivilege disclosure’.
Zaid Jilani suggests, in this recent piece, using “stolen valor” to describe a false mantle of oppression: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/identity-theft-underprivileged-status
All good.
Oppression-fraud? Subordination-fraud? They get at the idea but they’re clunky.
Oppression-leech? That’s a bit closer.
This Zaid Jilani piece is interesting. The R. Kelly part reminds me of the fake anti-racism stuff at the OJ Simpson trial, which is indeed another kind of appropriation or privilege imposture or cultural sandbagging. As was the verdict.
carpetbagging, not sandbagging
Don’t forget that she pretended to be a person of less social privilege in order to gain social status in a particular subculture: Woke Academia. Her shit wouldn’t have flown anywhere else.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1304099664233259009
Good point.
Oppression tourism?
It conveys the idea of just visiting a place rather being a permanent resident and also having the option to leave at any time which the permanent residents typically don’t have.
Bjarte,
I was about to suggest that, too, until you NINJA’D me.
It covers quite a lot of ground: the condescension of the tourist to the native; the suggestion of roughing it for larks; the ability to leave whenever they like; the taking of value without contribution…. all the worst attributes of thoughtless, wealthy tourists, especially in poorer or troubled areas.
I’ve been that arsehole tourist in the past and it sickens me to think of it, now.
Bjarte & latsot, that is precisely what troubles me about travel books, particularly (though with one or two exceptions) those about Japan and Bali, two places that seem to have brought out more nonsense in travellers than anywhere else.
I have been to both Japan and China myself. I hope I wasn’t that guy, but you never know… :-/
#13 TimHarris I lived in Japan for four years in the nineties, and agree that the place seems to inspire more nonsense than anywhere else on the planet. But that had no impact at all on the Japanese, who ran their very self-contained society for their own benefit, and who made absolutely no concessions to the needs or wishes of gaijin. Perhaps things have changed since I was there, though it would come as a surprise.
Bjarte @11 and latsot@12,
I think that actually, maddog’s suggestion of “carpetbagging” (I assume we’d make it “racial carpetbagging” or whatever to fit a particular example) captures what you’re talking about as well. If it weren’t for the unfortunate associations with Reconstruction, I’d say it’s perfect, but even so, it would hardly be the first phrase to be rehabilitated after iffy origins.
Screechy, I rather like your original suggestion of “sandbagging”, because it captures the idea of pretending to be worse off than one actually is. (It seems like a term with origins in horse racing, is that correct?) That is, not just pretending to be something one is not, but specifically pretending to be something lower or worse than one is.