[ad_1]
An American university launched an investigation after a professor admitted she had lied for years about being black and, in fact, white.
In a post on the online platform Medium, Jessica Krug, a history teacher focused on Africa, said that she had been pretending “for most of” her adult life.
“I have avoided my lived experience as a white Jewish girl in the Kansas City suburbs under various assumed identities within a blackness that I had no right to claim,” she wrote.
Ms. Krug, who is light-skinned, said she first claimed “North African blackness, then American-rooted blackness, then Bronx blackness with Caribbean roots.”
One of her former students at George Washington University in Washington DC told CNN that the professor expressed pride in her roots in the Bronx, but told another student that she was from Puerto Rico.
Ms. Krug told Medium that her actions were “the epitome of violence, of theft and appropriation, of the myriad ways that non-black people continue to use and abuse black identities and cultures.”
The professor, author of Fugitive Modernities: Kisama And The Politics Of Freedom, set in the African state of Angola, called herself a cultural “leech.”
In a brief statement, the university said: “We are aware of Jessica Krug’s post and are investigating the situation. We cannot comment further on personnel matters.”
That look of happiness when you see your book for the FIRST time! Jessica A. Krug with her book, “Fugitive Modernities: Kisama and the Politics of Freedom.” # africanstudies2018 pic.twitter.com/VISYULwGvh
– Duke University Press (@DukePress) November 30, 2018
The confession follows a 2015 controversy after American activist Rachel Dolezal made headlines by saying she identified as black, even though her parents were white.
“I’m more black than white,” Dolezal said at the time.
Cultural appropriation has become increasingly taboo in the United States, especially in progressive and college communities.
Pop diva Adele was recently criticized on social media after posting a photo of herself on Instagram with her hair in Bantu knots, a traditional African hairstyle.
[ad_2]