THREAD addressing the apparent ‘outing’ of a ‘race faker’ by @/mistressnowphd. 1/

I write this thread as someone with no connection to either of the parties involved. I’m posting from an anonymous account to even the playing field, but also to deprive Snow of her main mode of attack: personal harassment and bullying of her detractors until they give up. 2/

I feel compelled to post a thread because the narratives of a righteous ‘unmasking’ have remained constant while the parameters of the accusations have shifted. I have witnessed grad students and marginalised scholars, especially BIPOC scholars, get caught in the crossfire. 3/

I want to set the record straight about what I have witnessed play out. So let’s start from the beginning. On Oct 29 @/MistressSnowPhd posted a thread about an unnamed academic who falsely claims she is POC. The thread argued that this woman: 4/

1) had lied about being POC 2) had lied about being Jewish 3) had lied about her family fleeing the holocaust 4) had falsely taken scholarship money and fellowships designated for POC 5) had lied about being a first-gen grad because her father went to college. 5/

In this thread Snow made the concession that the accused academic could be ⅛ Jewish and the culture could still have shaped her upbringing, but that the real issue here is IDing as a WOC and taking scholarship money. Sure, makes sense. 6/

At this point, witnessing the thread, this was concerning. A white academic furthering their career by stealing opportunities designated for POC? We have heard this story before. My immediate reaction was anger: yet another academic is using a fake racial identity for clout 7/

But the next day Snow admitted to being wrong about the dad going to college. So accusation number 5 already held no water, and it was already clear Snow was willing to tweet conjecture and spread misinformation with no evidence. 8/

The situation changed on Nov 14, when the accused, S, was named by Snow. Snow posted a tweet in which S described antisemitic harassment, with the caption ‘bitch if you don’t shut your goy ass up’. 9/

Note that in other cases of ‘unmasking’ a report on the potential race-faker was compiled and published. But this began with an unsubstantiated call-out by a well-known twitter account. No evidence had been supplied before accusations and anger surfaced. 10/

This isn’t an attempt to tone-police Snow. Anger against a race-faker, or someone pretending to be Jewish, is justified. But it’s important to note that the focus at this stage wasn’t on the identity of the presumed race-faker, but purely on personal invective against them. 11/

In response S claimed she had Snow’s name and would report her, and that she had blocked Snow’s alt. These were two *separate* claims: Snow immediately conflated them, and accused anyone of asking for the name of the alt of soliciting her doxx. 12/

Snow then dropped her ‘evidence’, documents about S’s father’s family that indicated they had moved to the US before the rise of the Nazis. Among these receipts was S’s grandmother’s obit and an article about S’s cousin, a white supremacist who was stabbed to death. 13/

It’s important to note that none of these documents could prove that S was or wasn’t Roma or Jewish. Identities such as these, esp in immigrants, esp in POC or marginalised ppl, are hard to trace with years of careful research, let alone a casual ancestry dot com search. 14/

So let’s refresh. At this point, the core of the accusations against S were 1) that she had faked being Roma, 2) that she had faked being Jewish, 3) that her ancestors had not fled the Holocaust, and 4) that she had recieved scholarship money for being POC. 15/

On Nov 19, after five days of call-outs and harassment from Snow, who had yet to provide any solid proof that S was posing as a POC, S wrote a medium piece addressing the allegations. 16/

https://sydneeisanelf.medium.com/for-my-father-2451b2367fac

S stated she’d never received scholarship money for POC, and this has not been disputed by Snow since. Remember in her original thread Snow said it was not the tenuous claims to Jewish heritage, but scholarship money, that was crucial. Now claim 4) also seems to be false. 17/

S explained that her late father’s family ID as white, but she understands them to be Roma after hearing them use the terms ‘gypsy’ & ‘dark Czech’. She described how she witnessed her father being targeted by colour-based racism. She outlined the nuance of her Roma identity. 18/

“Family lore” that appropriates marginalized heritage (e.g. claims about Cherokee princesses) is usually emphasized by the family, not covered up. In S’s case, her family story was designed to assimilate into whiteness, and she had to work to uncover her Roma roots. 19/

So S strongly disputes claim 1), that she faked being Roma. She also disputes claim 2), that she faked being Jewish: she states her mother’s side is Jewish. I believe her, you don’t have to. But I must point out there is no evidence S’s claim to either identity is false. 20/

Now we get to claim 3) - S falsely stated her family fled the holocaust. This one turned out to be true. S admits this was based on ‘fuzzy family narratives’ and claims this was a misunderstanding. So this is one of Snow’s 5 original claims that has weight to it. 21/

After reading (and initially trusting) Snow’s claims, and then reading S’s defense, with no reason to trust either party and no skin in the game, I was struck by the extent to which ‘unmasking fake POC’ narratives remained constant while the claims became ever more fuzzy. 22/

For me, what began as shock at another academic careerbuilding by lying about race, heritage, and economic background, taking scholarship money for POC, turned into consideration of nuanced questions about ‘unprovable’ heritage, family narratives, who can claim identities. 23/

The clear-cut case of a fake POC I’ve seen play out wasn’t here. The implication that S, like others who have been ‘unmasked’, was an academic using her identity to further her career, was on even shakier ground when I discovered that S was no longer even in academia. 24/

S intentionally or not stressed aspects of her family history that weren’t fact. She’s still coming to terms with her heritage. She’s white-passing. Does this warrant full condemnation? I don’t think so but Snow and her followers certainly do. Let’s consider Snow’s behaviour: 25/

From the beginning, this attack was about S as a person, rather than any of S’s behavior. Starting with the “shut your goy ass up” tweet Snow focused not on revealing S but attacking her. I waited for the receipts to emerge but they never did. It felt dishonest. 26/

Snow both admitted that S’s scholarship was stellar, and then later went on to livetweet a reading (and criticism) of S’ dissertation - I believe Snow later deleted these. 27/

Snow also signal-boosted several accounts from people who had known S in grad school. None of these actually spoke to the core of Snow’s race-faking accusation, but instead accused S of a myriad of *other* things. 28/

I don’t know anything about the accuracy of these accounts, but that Snow found them useful reveals that she sees this as a project to take down S as a person, rather than solely the outing of a “race-faker.” 29/

And that’s just the thing - I don’t know these accounts are true, and nor does Snow. She says she has researched her claims but habitually posts anonymous DMs, hearsay, and screenshots as if they are verifiable material. 30/

The one grad school account which did speak to Snow’s accusations was an attempt at a Medium takedown ala Vitolo-Haddad, which mostly repeated the claims Snow made. It was taken down a few hours after being posted. 31/

An anonymous European Roma scholar came to Snow's defence in a medium article, which was treated by Snow as a definitive blessing on her views about S as a race-faker. However, it's important to remember that one person can’t speak for an entire community. 32/

Someone in Europe can't claim authority about how Roma people are racialized in the US. But yet again the piece provides NO evidence about S’s identity. It was clearly a broader discussion about feelings in the Roma community but from the perspective of one person. 33/

So Snow has accepted anecdotal evidence about S’s character, but only from detractors. I have witnessed as several BIPOC and Jewish scholars have rallied around S and vouched personally for her sensitivity towards racial issues, only for Snow to dismiss and then harass them. 34/

Attacking people, especially BIPOC, who disagree with her has been Snow’s MO the entire time, to the point that many have had to temporarily lock down their accounts because of the harassment they were getting from Snow’s followers. She called in POC who were not involved. 35/

Even accounts that agreed with Snow’s criticisms, but wanted to distance themselves from her tactics had to lock down. To Snow, this was something to *gloat* about, a symbol of some kind of victory. 36/

Snow says that this is just because she likes to fight. So because Snow is bored, she’s been driving marginalized and precarious academics off twitter. 37/

Snow has accused S’s friends and colleagues of harassing her and her followers. Her only evidence of this is that some people have been blocked. But *she herself* posted screenshots suggesting people run block chains if they didn’t wanna be targeted. 38/

Blocking isn't harassing, it’s the opposite, and forcing women of colour to lock down and run block chains of your followers is nothing to be proud of. The policing of Black women’s opinions is a classic hallmark of misogynoir. And yet Snow claims her platform is anti-racism? 39/

The sick racism inherent in Snow’s attack against S came to the surface most apparently when she made a joke about skinning a brown-skinned man, S’s father who has passed away, and wearing his skin as a garment. This shows how Snow sees racial identity as surface-level. 40/

From the outside looking in, it would be easy to see Snow as the victim here. After all, she has insisted she is from the outset. She outed a race-faker, she is being harassed for it. But I have yet to see concrete evidence for either of these claims. 41/

I have seen several people summarise the situation as ‘Snow has outed a white woman as a fake POC’ or something to that effect. That’s the narrative Snow is pushing, and for someone only loosely following this, it would be easy to believe. 42/

Conversations about who can claim identities are valid. What I have witnessed is a white woman policing identity using baseless assertions and using her anonymous platform to harass people of colour until they feel unsafe. Snow is not the anti-racist hero any of us asked for. 43/