BUZZ
‘I still believe in every cause I ever supported, in the ongoing fight for justice and in the righteousness of liberation for all oppressed peoples’
Remember Rachel Dolezal? She was the Caucasian adjunct professor who, beginning over a decade ago, claimed she was black.
Now known as “Nkechi Diallo,” Dolezal went so far as to claim she was born in a teepee in Montana, that her family hunted for food with bows and arrows, and was punished “by skin color.”
She also attempted to prevent (white) anti-racism activist Tim Wise from speaking at Eastern Washington University because “white folks can’t speak with any legitimacy to issues of racism.”
This past week, news of a similar situation arose in the City of Brotherly Love where a teacher who claimed she had black and Palestinian ancestry turned out to be a “white [Jewish] woman of significant privilege and wealth.”
Hannah Gann, a high school social studies teacher at the public Workshop School, had confessed the week before on Instagram to her ersatz ethnic background, NBC News reports.
“There is not a single person on this planet, no friend, no fellow organizer, no one in my family, no professional connection, no secret op or handler who knew what I was doing,” Gann said in a video. “I hid my family’s background from everyone in Philly, and also hid from the people in my own family what I was doing.”
In separate posts, Gann wrote “Anyone who supported me was manipulated and should not be judged as a result of their support for me,” and that she “is trying to do everything [she] can to make this right.”
She also said she “still believe[s] in every cause [she] ever supported, in the ongoing fight for justice and in the righteousness of liberation for all oppressed peoples.”
According to the NBC report, one of Gann’s fellow teachers said she had been tipped off by someone at the Philly Palestine Coalition on Labor Day that her peer’s ethnic background was fake.
The teacher claimed she then tried to query Gann’s father about the ancestry claims, but Gann “hung up on her father and snapped” at her.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the Philly Palestine Coalition had discovered that Gann’s grandfather, whom she claimed was Palestinian, actually was from Baltimore. Gann also has family living in Israel.
From the Inquirer story:
Gann told people she was low on money because she was sending cash to family in Palestine, according to the PPC document. Some people sent her money as a result. A University of Pennsylvania classmate of Gann’s said she was known in college “as a self-proclaimed white Jewish woman with family in the occupied West Bank. I watched her sudden transformation after she returned to Philly from the Peace Corps [in Rwanda]. She was clearly making herself look darker using makeup and fake tan, and speaking using [African American Vernacular English.]”
The Philadelphia School District said it is “aware of social media posts concerning a district employee and her involvement with an outside advocacy organization,” and is “making support available to any affected Workshop School staff and students.”
MORE: Six white female academics have posed as scholars of color in recent years
