Prominent human rights attorney who claimed to be Latina admits she is a white woman from Georgia

A prominent human rights lawyer and former president of the National Lawyers Guild has admitted that she is not Latina, but in fact a white woman from Georgia. 

Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan, senior counsel at the Latino Justice Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, claimed Puerto Rican and Colombian heritage, according to Prism. 

Records obtained by the site say Bannan’s family in fact arrived in the United States from Ireland, Italy and Russia, and she was born in Georgia.  

On Monday, Bannan, 43, responded to the report and confirmed that she is white.

‘I am racially white, and have always said that,’ she said. 

‘However my cultural identity was formed as a result of my family, both chosen and chosen for me, and that has always been Latinx. 

‘My identity is my most authentic expression of who I am and how I pay honor to the people who have formed me since I was a child.’ 

Bannan is the latest in a growing line of people to be revealed as having assumed a false racial identity. 

Alec Baldwin’s wife Hilaria was ‘outed’ on December 21 as being a white woman from Boston, known until 2009 as Hilary, whose parents happen to live in Spain.

In 2015 Rachel Dolezal was called a ‘race faker’ for claiming she ‘identified as black’, despite being born to white parents.

Bannan said that she had dedicated herself to ‘using my privilege as a racially white, U.S.-based woman to denounce the aggressions of this country.’

On social media, people were unimpressed.

‘Girl, please stop,’ said one.

‘What the hell is that? She’s white,’ said another.

One accused her of ‘tryna Dolezal your way out through this’.  

‘Race faking’ has become a frequent phenomena in the United States.

In September a community activist from Indiana who campaigned for racial justice outed herself after posing as a black person for years despite being white.

Satchuel Cole, born Jennifer Lynn Benton, admitted in a Facebook post to having ‘taken up space as a Black person while knowing I am white’. 

The activist, from Indianapolis, was a member of the Indy10 Black Lives Matter group and in 2017 acted as a spokesperson for the family of Aaron Bailey, who was shot and killed by police following a traffic stop in June 2017.

Cole – who uses the pronouns they and them – is just the latest in a string of people  who have admitted to lying about being black.  

‘Friends, I need to take accountability for my actions and the harm that I have done,’ Cole wrote on a Facebook page with the name Satch Paige. 

‘My deception and lies have hurt those I care most about. I have taken up space as a black person while knowing I am white. I have used blackness when it was not mine to use.

‘I have asked for support and energy as a Black person. I have caused harm to the city, friends and the work that I held so dear. I will do the work to take responsibility for my actions and try to reduce the harm that I have already caused.’

Cole promised to work to repair the harm caused if possible.  

The same week, University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student CV Vitolo-Haddad resigned from a teaching role after admitting to lying about being black.  

Vitolo-Haddad pretended on multiple occasions to be black or Latino although the teacher is actually Southern Italian and Sicilian.  

Vitolo-Haddad confessed to the deception in two Medium blog posts and apologized for ‘every ounce of heartbreak and betrayal’ caused by the false claims.  

‘In trying to sort through parts of who I am, I’ve taken some very wrong turns. I never really owned up to them as they became apparent, nor recognized the trail of damage behind me,’ Vitolo-Haddad wrote.

Jessica Krug, 38, a white professor of African American studies confessed in a Medium post earlier in September that she had been faking being black for years.  

The professor at George Washington University admitted she had deceived colleagues and students for years.

Krug grew up as a white Jewish child in Kansas City but assumed a series of different black identities throughout her career, she confessed in a Medium blog post on September 3. 

Krug resigned from her role at the university following a backlash over the deception.  

Michelle Moyd, the Ruth N. Halls Associate Professor in the Department of History at IU, said that the recent spike in the exposure of race fakers will have extremely negative effects on the black community. 

‘Each time one of these frauds is exposed, the people around them are left to pick up the pieces,’ she said.