I deal with them by dealing with the issue at hand, which is likely not their racial identity.

And BTW ... EVERYONE is welcome in this group ... until they post racist crap, and then, only if they try to argue that their racist crap is not racist crap.

(As an example: Please do not come to this group and attempt to tell us what is and is not racist. Please do not come into this group and argue that white priviledge does not exist because you are struggling and JZ, Oprah and President Obama are not.)

Not really. But I was admin at and continue to moderate a board (not political nature). We had a woman who came on there and told us she had helped deliver a baby at a Taco Bell - not true. This was a few years ago - and in our twelve years of existence - you always have a few munchausen by Internet, drama trolls, etc etc. Generally online communities do not have "cannot lie" in TOS - because it's impossible to track and stop.

Best bet? Ignore them until they out themselves.

except that it has come up regarding whether a certain person might be a troll. I raised my suspicions in that context (not to the person in question).

Time will tell. Strange days at DU lately unfortunately.

they were banned shortly there after. The vast majority of the people who fell for it weren't black.

There was also a bit of confusion over a poster who some of us thought was black but actually wasn't. What was really, really funny though was that when most of the black posters here found out he wasn't black, we couldn't have cared less because he was really cool. But for some reason, some white posters HATED it that we still liked him even after they'd decided that he was misrepresenting himself. To make matters worse, we still liked him but that we couldn't stand quite of few of the white posters upset about it. This is kind of a cryptic response but that's for a reason.

And like 1SBM said, you don't have to be black to post in this group. It's open to everyone.

Please PM me. I'd be interested in getting the assessment of African American members about the person in question.

If I'm wrong, that would be very bad.

Back in the early days of DU, there was a VERY conservative high-post Dem who regularly claimed to be one of us (even sported an MLK avatar)...But he was pretty obvious so I'd sent Skinner like ten PMs begging for his bannage...And even though DU was relatively lightning quick with the banhammer in those days, he lasted like 2-3 years...Of course I have very strong reason to believe he just continued on under other screennames (also still claiming to be African American), since it has always been easy for me to sniff out common talking points/writing style/grammar/themes from supposedly 'different' accounts...Every time I have an amnesty and purge my ignore list, his name(s) almost always are the first to go right back on...

The other DUer I'm only half-sure about, although he does have some sketchy history -- The most damning thing I can say about him is he never seems to be on "our" side in certain threads, and he's the only black American I've ever known to not show an ounce of outrage at the thought of Trayvon being racially profiled (and yes, this DUer claims to have been profiled in the past)

about the person I'm thinking of. Even conservative black men know what it's like to be followed and scrutinized because of the color of their skin. I find it strange that someone who says he is African American would show no awareness or interest in the racial implications of the Martin killing and other similar cases.

and you'll run into plenty of them. Ever since Disqus revamped its commenting system, posters have been showing up there from other sites.

if their claims/comments are spurious, they get dumped on.