A Canadian woman by the name of Carrie Bourassa was fired from her Government roles and suspended from her academic position in Saskatchewan after her true ethnicity was revealed. Bourassa has been an indigenous expert for years in Canada. She holds a Ph.D. in her professor role at the University of Saskatchewan. She was the former Director of Science at the Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health. All of her professional statuses appear to hinge on the fact that she identified as native.
To be exact, Bourassa identified as being of Métis ancestry. Some of her colleagues became suspicious of her ethnicity when changes in her story began to arise. An investigation was conducted and it was discovered that she is mostly of Eastern European heritage – specifically Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. No native ancestry at all.
The obvious pattern that has developed here probably has a simple reason for existing. And that is the fact that being a “minority” has privileges. The concept of “white privilege” exists only on sheets of paper in the halls of academia where, ironically enough, the most white-to-minority race-hoaxing happens. The true “privilege” comes from being a minority – especially in academic and/or corporate settings. There are so many set-asides and bar-lowering for non-whites that one would almost be a fool to not explore them. Being white gives a person no professional advantage but being a minority does. So the race-hoaxing becomes incentivized.
Carrie Bourassa’s story is not an uncommon one. It has become a pattern in the Western world to have regular white people identify as other races, usually for professional reasons. Almost all of the high-profile cases have involved people in academia. The now-Senator Elizabeth Warren started falsely identifying as native early into her 30 years as a professor before her political career. Jessica Krug taught at George Washington University for nearly a decade before her masquerade as a black woman was revealed. The most famous white race-hoaxer, Rachel Dolezal, was a part-time college instructor for many years.
SOURCES:
Carrie Bourassa, Canadian Indigenous health guru, ousted from government roles after she’s revealed to be white | The Independent
How Carrie Bourassa passed herself off as indigenous for years
Canadian academic on leave amid row over Indigenous ancestry claims | Canada | The Guardian
Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health – CIHR
