Africana studies professor Jessica Krug made a confession on Medium today: she’s been living a lie for “most of her adult life”, living as various types of Black women:
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. I have not only claimed these identities as my own when I had absolutely no right to do so…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.
Dr. Krug continues to explain that the deceit was due to “mental health issues” gleaned as a “teenager fleeing trauma” which, as she acknowledges, does nothing to lessen the impact of her duplicity, referring to herself as a “culture leech”.
She effectively dehumanizes racists in her piece, saying “I don’t believe that any anti-Black life has inherent value”, and continues by acknowledging her actions in no uncertain terms:
I was audaciously deceptive. I have a very clear, loud conscience, but I have acted as if I had none. I gaslit you. I begged for your compassion and love for my isolation and loneliness — real and raw feelings, but borne of the avalanche of deceit.
While this story evinces memories of Rachel Dolezal, the NAACP head who was outed by her white family in 2015, Dr. Krug is a woman who not only painted over a white identity, but a white Jewish identity. Her piece goes into little detail about this, save the initial annoucement. One can not help but wonder if said Jewish identity played into the thought process of the trauma-fleeing teenager, piecing together a new identity.
Dr. Krug undoubtedly has a long way to go to rebuild the trust of her colleagues, and the Black community at large. In any event, kudos to Dr. Krug for coming out as her true self of her own volition, instead of being outed by jilted relatives. Dr. Krug now begins the long, arduous process of digging herself out of her anti-Black masquerade.
