By: Zach Linly, The Root
By now everyone has heard of the menacing virus that crossed oceans and created a global pandemic.
Oh nah, I’m not talking about COVID. This globe-spanning infection predates the coronavirus by a good 400 years or so. This apparently incurable disease is called “caucasity.” (In the U.S. they wanted to call it COVID-1619 but they figured there’d be trademark issues or whatever.)
Well, a new strain of caucasity was recently discovered by scientists, and after it was studied and reverse engineered (I’m not sure if that’s a term that can be applied to viruses but stay with me), experts dubbed this new strain the “Dolezalavirus.”
White progressives are said to be most vulnerable to Dolezalavirus infection as the disease causes them to feel they just aren’t oppressed enough to be popular in their social circles so they just up and decide to be entire Black people. (See Jessica Krug and CV Vitolo-Haddad.) But recently, this very special strain of white hubris mixed with full spice cabinet-envy appears to have infected Craig Chapman, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of New Hampshire, who happens to be a white man despite allegedly telling people online that he’s an immigrant woman of color who goes by “The Science Femme.”
Chapman—who everyone keeps telling me is not Mitchell Pritchett from Modern Family, but he looks just like him—is being accused of using a non-white identity to…well…be white as fuck.
From the Daily Beast:
Susanna Harris, a microbiology Ph.D. holder who currently works in science communications, first noticed the @piney_the Twitter account in July.
“They put out this huge long thread about how they, as a woman of color in science, a professor, made a big change in their university by shutting down diversity, equity, and inclusion work,” Harris, who is white, told The Daily Beast.
Harris wasn’t the only person to make note of the thread, in which @piney_the claimed to have been “successful in killing my dept’s woke statement on recent social unrest.” The viral thread earned write-ups in conservative publications like RedState, which lauded the efforts to derail an anti-racism statement. Some academics were suspicious of the claims, coming from an anonymous professor at an unnamed university.
“I did a little bit of poking around to see if there was any chance this was a real person,” Harris recalled. “I’ve been on Twitter for a while and nothing about their account said anything to make me think this is a genuine account.”
Other Twitter users had raised similar concerns earlier this year. @piney_the was an especially combative Twitter personality, who frequently tangled with the left online. The account described a female opponent in explicit anatomical terms on at least one occasion, repeatedly railed against transgender people, and posted censored nude pictures of former Rep. Katie Hill. Hill, a former California politician, resigned last year after those pictures were made public in an alleged revenge-pornography campaign.
After “The Science Femme” was accused of racism and “attacking POC,” the account user clapped back at his accusers by tweeting, “You know I’m a woman of color, right? Racist.”
Screenshots of posts from the account also show that the same user claimed to be “an immigrant woman of color who grew up in poverty, sleeping on a dirt floor.” (Yeah, a white man definitely wrote that. Hollywood has shown us for a century white writers’ penchant for creating stereotypical origin stories for non-white characters.
Eventually, people figured out that “The Science Femme” is probably a white guy posing as a woman of color for “see, I can’t possibly be racist” clout.
More from The Daily Beast:
Other academics soon seized on the similarities between @piney_the’s account and Craig Chapman’s, shortly before both accounts were deleted last week.
An internal email (shared by department members and previously reported by local media) from UNH chemistry chair Glen Miller suggests those fears were well-founded.
“The fake twitter account was in fact set up and run by Craig,” read the email, obtained by The Daily Beast. “There were a large number of things written by Craig that ranged from unfortunate to hurtful to deeply offensive. These statements do not represent me, nor the collegial, collaborative, accepting department in which I have had the privilege to work for the past 25 years. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course, but when those opinions are dismissive or hurtful or harmful to others, it is not ok with me. I reject those statements and their intent, wholeheartedly. But even so, I do not reject Craig. I am not giving up on Craig.”
The letter went on to describe Chapman as “embarrassed and overwhelmed and shell shocked. He fears that this could be the end of his academic career. I hope it is not and I told him so.” Chapman would “come clean” and express remorse to colleagues soon, Miller wrote.
So, Chapman—who may not be Mitchell Pritchett but definitely tells women at bars that he’s Ed Sheeran—has a lot of explaining to do. The university released a statement to the Daily Beast saying the incident is under investigation.
“UNH was recently made aware of allegations on social media about a member of its faculty,” a UNH spokesperson said. “We are deeply troubled by what we’ve learned so far and immediately launched an investigation. The employee at the center of allegations on social media is on leave and not in the classroom. In order to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation, the university is unable to comment further.”
Caucasity: Even if there was a vaccine, they’d never take it.
