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White Professor of African Studies Confesses to Having Lied About Being Black For Years

An African and Latin American studies professor at George Washington University recently revealed that she is actually a White woman who has lied about being Black throughout most of her adult life and professional career.

In her own post to Medium, associate professor Dr. Jessica Krug, confessed that, “To an escalating degree over my adult life, I have eschewed my lived experience as a white Jewish child in suburban Kansas City under various assumed identities within a Blackness that I had no right to claim: first North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness.”

Krug, who has written extensively about Africa, Latin America, the diaspora and identity, often took staunch ethical stances against colonialism, racism and cultural appropriation — all while presenting herself as a Black and Latina woman.

Jessica KrugJessica Krug

In the post, she acknowledged her own hypocrisy, writing, “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.”

Krug said that she believes she took on a false identity in response to “severe trauma that marked my early childhood and teen years.” But, she added, “mental health issues can never, will never, neither explain nor justify, neither condone nor excuse, that, in spite of knowing and regularly critiquing any and every non-Black person who appropriates from Black people, my false identity was crafted entirely from the fabric of Black lives.”

In response to the news, George Washington University said it was “looking into the situation,” but that it could not comment on “personnel matters.”

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