Look. I want to get my Mulan and gardening on this weekend but I can’t get over the person who stole a BW’s career. Because that’s what she did.

Folks who say she’s brilliant are missing the point. Would she still have been brilliant without the financial and emotional

support that was set aside for BW?

In my experience, be it day job career or writing, every job, every sale, every award, built my network and my resume. It’s all intertwined.

There are limited slots in academia. Let me repeat that again, there are limited slots.

You cannot convince me that there is not a BW walking around today who would have had a career if not for this...person.

Colorism is an obvious factor. What also is a factor is she fed the system the BW they wanted. She came up with a story of trauma and pain that

to non-Black eyes looked authentic.

She was successful for the same reason non-Black people will get praise and deals for writing Black characters- they’re selling the non-Black version of who we are which is a story wrapped in pain.

And that version reads as more authentic to TPTB than actual reality. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that this version of Black life also upholds white supremacy.

I bet if I ever ran in the same circles of this con artist I would not be considered authentic.

Yes, my great-grandfather was the son of slaves, and my grandfather was a sharecropper, but I was raised in suburban Atlanta in a 2 parent household. HBCU grad and sorority girl - EE-YIP.

In the Black Community, I am very much the stereotypical single auntie who,

as my niece says, goes on vacation all the time.

But outside the community? I would bet I would be passed over for trauma with a side of the most white looking person they could find or some other identifier of being exotic.

There have been discussions about POC pimping trauma

to get into prestigious schools.

Y’all. It a mess. The damage this person has done is unimaginable. Restitution is more than just losing her job. She did harm. She cannot make up for it.

The person whose place she took could have been a person who mentored younger BW scholars.

Because that’s what BW do. We look out for each other. We care for each other. We don’t even have to LIKE someone, but if they’re good for the community, we’ll help them.

Our generosity, our acceptance, the way we don’t call out our own except in extenuating circumstances,

all were aspects of our community which allowed a white woman from Kansas to pose a Black Latina from the Bronx her entire professional career.

Academia invested in the wrong person. No. No. That’s being gracious.

This woman kept changing her story until she hit on a money making persona.

Academia invested in the person they wanted.