US academic admits she faked being black for years
A WHITE university professor and US civil rights activist has admitted pretending to be black for years.
Jessica Krug, who was raised as a white Jewish child in Kansas City, adopted several aliases including that of Jess La Bombera when testifying via Zoom before New York city council during a hearing on police brutality.
Describing her experiences in the Bronx in something resembling “jive” talk, she paid tribute to her “black and brown siblings” as she lashed out at whites who failed to surrender their speaking time to “brown indigenous
New Yorkers”. The professor of African American history at George Washington University made her confession in a blog post on the Medium website.
She said throughout her adult life she had “assumed identities within a blackness that I had no right to claim: first North African blackness, then Usrooted blackness, then Caribbeanrooted Bronx blackness”.
She added: “I have not only claimed these identities as my own when I had absolutely no right to do so – when doing so is the very epitome of violence, of thievery and appropriation, of the myriad ways in which non-black people continue to use and abuse black identities and cultures – but I have formed intimate relationships with loving, compassionate people who have trusted and cared for me when I have deserved neither trust nor caring.”
Her confession was greeted with dismay by Hair Ziyad, a screenwriter and author of Black Boy Out of Time.
He wrote on Twitter: “Jess Krug, is someone I called a friend up until this morning when she gave me a call admitting to everything written here. She didn’t do it out of benevolence. She did it because she had been found out.”
A spokesman for George Washington University said staff were looking into the matter.