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cw: discussions of deportation, ICE, and the death penalty
Spoilers for Season 33, Episode 2 of Dancing with the Stars
I’ve been watching Dancing With the Stars since I was a kid. My grandma, mom, and I loved watching those kinds of shows: shows taking celebrities and putting them into new situations that were meant to challenge them. Most of the time, I had no idea who the celebrities were (unless they were from the Disney Channel), but I enjoyed watching them and voting for my favorites each week.
Twenty years later, I still don’t know who most of the celebrities are, but I still looked forward to hearing who was going to be on this season. Imagine my surprise when one of the few names I recognized was Anna Delvey.
Delvey (born Anna Sorokin) created a fake persona as a German heiress from 2013 to 2017, using it to con New York City’s wealthy fashion scene out of $275,000. Her story became well known after one of the people she conned, former friend Rachel DeLoache Williams, wrote a book called My Friend Anna (which I talked about with Rah on this episode of the podcast). The book was about how Delvey invited her on an “all-expenses paid” trip to Marrakech, Morocco, and had her pay the $62,000 bill. It also goes into her attempts to get the money back and, ultimately, details how she worked with the NYPD on the case, leading to Delvey’s arrest and conviction. Delvey has since been placed on parole for her fraud, but is currently a detainee under ICE after overstaying her visa. She is currently under house arrest as she fights her deportation to Germany.
So imagine my surprise when I learned that ICE, an organization known for separating families over a lack of papers and a speeding ticket, granted Delvey, who is meant to be under 24-hour house arrest, permission to go to LA to film Dancing with the Stars under the caveat that she continued to wear her ankle monitor.
Let’s be clear: Anna Delvey received this opportunity because she is pretty and white. She got to “reinvent” herself on live TV as a fashionista and an entrepreneur rather than as a con artist because of her whiteness.
When I saw the camera and choreography intentionally framing her bedazzled ankle monitor, I didn’t think of her as “iconic” or a “girlboss.” I thought of ICE holding kids in cages and undocumented people worrying about deportation. I thought of the hateful lies spread by a U.S. vice-presidential candidate about the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio and how it put them in danger. I thought about how the Missouri governor and the U.S. Supreme Court refused a stay of execution for Marcellus Williams after DNA testing proved his innocence, and how now he’s dead, killed by a government and system that prioritizes whiteness above all others.
Black and brown incarcerated people don’t get the types of chances Delvey did. They don’t get a Netflix show out of it that pays their lawyer fees and over $4,000 a month in rent. So I’m sorry, Dancing with the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba. I’m not able to “just give this a chance.” It’s not about the fact that Delvey got to be on the show after her conviction. It’s about the fact that day after day, whiteness is afforded more opportunities. It’s about how the show highlighted this double-standard by choreographing around her ankle monitor and calling her a “notorious ankle bracelet fashionista.” It’s about how even with the opportunity she’d been given, she responded to “How do you feel?” with “I feel happy that I don’t have to do this dance again.”
When asked, “What are you taking away from this competition?” after being eliminated from Dancing with the Stars, her response was “Nothing.” Saying this after being give such an opportunity is just one way she continues to flaunt the privilege her whiteness gives her. It makes me furious.
You can click here to learn more about the Innocence Network and their work taking on cases like Marcellus Williams’.
