You can’t have it both ways

I still get over to The Daily podcast every so often, and this week a Sunday Read from a few months ago titled “The Native Scholar who Wasn’t” caught my eye. It was about a woman named Andrea Smith who’d built an academic career as a Native American activist on the claims that she was Cherokee.

But she wasn’t. And that’s been demonstrated quite clearly. She was born to white parents, who in turn had white parents, who in turn had white parents.

The piece got a bit into how claims of Native American ancestry work, but they made far too many allowances. “It depends on who accepts you” – waffling words like that. The whole thing was a bit disturbing.

I can almost draw a parallel between stolen identity and stolen land. Native Americans who had a different concept of “ownership” were driven from land they had roamed for centuries. Now it seems white people are once again taking advantage of their concepts of tribal membership to take their honor too.

Some may support Smith because of the “good” she has done. But what is “good”? To millions of Americans, Donald Trump was “good” for the country. So what if he’s a liar. Isn’t Smith a liar too? To whose standard of “good” do you appeal? Who sets those standards? The good a person does might be easy to see for some, but shouldn’t we all be able to spot the wrong a person is doing even more easily? You shouldn’t be able to stand up and tell the lies Donald Trump has told and yet claim to be a person of integrity and virtue — a “good”person. That’s pretty obvious. But you also can’t claim to be American Indian…or even more specifically, “Cherokee”…when you aren’t and thinks that’s just fine.

Here’s the bottom line: Smith is another white progressive academic who’s horned her way into her position and status by claiming she’s something she’s not. I can’t fathom the psychological state of someone who would concoct such an elaborate lie and look you right in the eye while telling it. But at the very least, we should all be able to agree that she’s an insult to the heritage of Native Americans. Looking on the bright side though, at least she may have done us the favor or showing us all the hearts of the many who don’t care enough about these people to call her out on it.

In a sane world, I’d say you really can’t have it both ways. You can’t attack one person as a liar and charlatan, while letting another one slide. You can’t claim to champion the rights of an oppressed and underrepresented people, but then exploit and belittle their heritage by claiming it as your own.

But whoever said this was a sane world anymore?

Having said all of that, my purpose here isn’t really to attack Andrea Smith. Until this morning, I had no idea who she was, and I’m not particularly interested in seeing her “get what’s coming to her.” If she decides to come forward, apologize, and make amends, well, good for her. That’d be great.

But one thing does disturb me about the whole matter — the blind hypocrisy of those who act as though theirs is the true path to world salvation when in fact they’re just like everyone else. They’ll overlook lies and deceit for their own conveniences, but scream bloody murder when “the other guy” does it. And who gets to determine which lies are the “good” ones? Which deceits pass? Well…they do.

In the end, it always comes back to one thing for me: what is the ground truth? In a world that denies God, there is no alternative but to look for what one thinks is best and then to stick with that. So we have our Trump supporters and we have our supporters of the likes of Smith and others who are just as willing to sacrifice the truth for whatever cause they think is right. In the end for each one of them it really just comes down to one thing: self-satisfaction. Scratch that itch and make the person at the center of their world (themselves) feel good all day, every day.

And here’s where we really can’t have it both ways, because if all we have that gives us purpose comes from within ourselves, there will come a time when we fail. And then where do we turn?