The Death of a Fake Twitter Personality Reveals the Systemic Rot of Academia; Medium, August 11, 2020

Asher Elbein, Medium; The Death of a Fake Twitter Personality Reveals the Systemic Rot of Academia

"The creation of such an identity — as multiple Native scholars and writers have pointed out — isn’t just deeply disrespectful to the small community of Natives in academia, and it doesn’t just play into a gross American tradition of appropriation. It’s also coming at a time when Native people are being killed by Covid-19 at 19 times the rate of all other populations combined in New Mexico alone. Before McLaughlin was unmasked, Duarte says, she had been avoiding social media, which for those with family in the Four Corners region of the Southwest felt like a rolling obituary. She and Washuta both recalled hearing the news that a Native colleague had died and instantly wondering if it was someone they knew. Killing off a fake Native account through Covid-19 registers as doubly cruel.

“The behavior of this individual Dr. McLaughlin eclipses the actual work of Native colleagues,” Duarte says, as well as the struggles of LGTBQ Native people who themselves suffer disproportionate rates of violence. “It sort of feels like being rendered invisible many times over.”"