Jessica Krug: American white teacher posed as black

meIn the United States, a rather confusing case of “identity theft” made headlines: Professor Jessica A. Krug, an African-American history expert who has taught at George Washington University since 2012, has gone public that she has been speaking of its ancestry and origins for decades. lied.

The 38-year-old, who always publicly identified as black in New York and Washington, is actually a white woman of Jewish faith from Kansas City.

She explained this in a blog post titled “The Truth and Violence Against Blacks From My Lies” and also said that she had misled friends and colleagues for years. “For most of my adult life, every move I have made, every relationship I have built has been rooted in the napalm soil of lies,” he wrote verbatim.

As an adult, she always acquired “identities” that were not hers. Among other things, she would have pretended to come from North Africa, and later that she was a black American with Caribbean roots from the Bronx. “She had absolutely no right” to claim these identities for herself, she says regretfully.

Exactly the cultural appropriation that he always criticized

This was exactly the “epitome of violence, theft and cultural appropriation” with which non-blacks would repeatedly exploit the identities and cultures of blacks, he says self-criticism. But she especially regrets that she lied and misled the people who trusted her and fought for her. This behavior was “unethical, immoral, anti-black and colonial” and a bitter human disappointment to the people they love, Krug continues.

In their articles on the case, the British and American media report the incidents in which Krug was active under her false identity. In a public hearing on police violence, she rebuked white New Yorkers who allegedly lacked support for blacks under her activist pseudonym “Jessica La Bombalera.”

In statements made online, she also described herself as a “unrepentant and unrepentant Hood child.” (Hood refers to the black community and the neighborhood) and lamented his ancestors (in slavery) servitude: “My ancestors, unknown, nameless, who bleed their lives in the future who had no reason to believe that they could or should exist in it.”

Similarities to the Rachel Dolezal case

Krug’s confession recalls the scandal involving Rachel Dolezal, the head of a black lobby group in Washington who was exposed in 2015 as a white woman pretending to be black. Dolezal made headlines around the world, not only because of her made-up origins, but also because, in an attempt to look as black as possible, she had also braided her hair into dreadlocks and tanned her face.

Krug seems to have refrained from such optical changes. However, it is possible that Krug benefited from his alleged African-American origins in his academic career. Among other things, he apparently obtained financial support from the “Schomburg Center for Black Culture Research” as reported by “The Guardian”.

Krug seems to have aggressively played with his public ego in private as well. A neighbor of Krug, the “Daily Mail” names her as Anna Anderson, knew how to inform journalists that Krug called her “white trash” and accused her of “gentrifying” the neighborhood.

It’s unclear what exactly motivated Krug to make her confession, but she was apparently in danger of being exposed.

American reporter who according to blog post began to investigate He learned that there were anonymous references to Krug’s actual origin (Kansas and not the Bronx) to his superiors and editors. A university professor However, he wants to know about a young black student who has made public her doubts about Krug’s identity at the university. A little later, Krug himself went public.

But there may also be a personal tragedy behind his masquerade: In his blog post he hinted that he had a “traumatic childhood” and that he had already begun to assume false identities back then. Also, she has been struggling with psychological problems of what nature for years, she did not reveal.

The old companions are horrified

But it is clear that now she is full of self-criticism and sadness. “I have thought about ending these lies for many years, but my cowardice has always been more powerful than my ethics… I know right from wrong. I know the history ”. But she was “a coward”, a “cultural leech”.

It remains to be seen what personal and professional consequences Krug will face. When questioned, the Daily Mail received a response from the University of Washington that it was “aware of the matter” and was “looking into the situation.” In general, however, “no comment is made on personnel matters.”

Meanwhile, publishers of books where Krug had written essays and books on black culture have removed some of the articles and posts about its author.

And on social networks some of his confidants from the activist scene expressed their disappointment with “La Bombalera”. “I’m dizzy and I keep processing my feelings, but mostly I feel cheated, stupid and ‘gas lit’ in so many ways (a modern term for emotional violence, d. Red.) “Said author Robert Jones Jr. On twitter.