The Gross Absurdities of White Privilege
I recently had a chance to watch Netflix’s Inventing Anna and Hulu’s The Dropout. Both of them are fabulous programs about how far a lie can go. Anna Delvey pretended to be a German heiress who scammed her way into New York’s elite society. The miniseries is based on the legendary New York magazine article about her. Elizabeth Holmes is the founder of Theranos, a company that claimed to diagnose medical ailments quickly through a blood testing machine. She thought she was going to be the next Steve Jobs, even wearing black turtlenecks to emulate the late Apple founder. In the end, she stole a lot of money from investors.
Both ladies were convicted for a garden variety of fraud charges.
Something that isn’t really discussed with these programs is how the women were able to get away with so much. I have a hard time believing that any woman of color would ever be taken seriously if she even attempted to commit this level of fraud. Being an attractive, young white woman does have a lot of cachet. The craziest thing about Inventing Anna happened in episode four when an investment banker just gives Anna a $40 million loan without a detailed background check or even a basic Google search on her. I remember applying for a $10,000 business loan years ago, and I was told to bring in five years of tax returns, W2s, 1099s, two government-approved photo IDs like a passport and driver’s license, and a host of other notarized paperwork just to be considered for an interview with the bank, which later denied me the loan.
Even Ryan Coogler can’t even withdraw $12,000 from his own bank account, but, sure, let’s give crazy Anna millions of dollars. In what galaxy does any of these make any sense?