What if, to take advantage of affirmative action, you pretended to be something or someone you are not, claiming a disability so as to require an accommodation or claiming to be a member of a historically disadvantaged group?
We had the famous case of Rachel Dolezal in the U.S., the purportedly Black head of the Spokane Washington NAACP chapter, who also claimed Native American blood and to have been the victim of race-related hate crimes. That is, until her parents outed her as a white woman. She ultimately was forced to admit her actual ancestry but, in her defence, then claimed to self-identify as Black. Obviously a rank naif, I never thought that that was even possible. At a time of affirmative action in employment, with employers focusing on hiring more BIPOC employees, minority status has definite advantages. The potential of such false claims is one of the arguments against affirmative action.
The controversy circling Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the prominent professor and former judge whose claims of native ancestry have been challenged in a series of CBC reports, is certainly stirring up similar outrage.
According to those CBC reports, Turpel-Lafond has self-described — including to the Senate during one presentation — as a Cree born in Norway House, a poor reserve in Manitoba. She claims to have survived an abusive, alcoholic home where she suffered physical mistreatment in rural Manitoba, skipping high school but...
During August 2026, a series of misleading, fabricated and falsely contextualised claims circulated across social media platforms and media accounts in Bharat. The claims covered electoral rolls, ...