White Professor Admits She's Been Lying About Being Black for Years
An African and Latin American studies professor at George Washington University has revealed she has lied about being black her entire career.
In a Thursday Medium post, Jessica Krug said that every move and relationship she’s made during her adult life “has been rooted in the napalm toxic soil of lies.”
“To an escalating degree over my adult life, I have eschewed my lived experience as a white Jewish child in the 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,” she wrote.
“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.”
Krug said she has sought help from mental health professionals and has learned that assuming a false identity comes as a response to severe trauma that marked her early life.
“But 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,” she wrote.
“I have lived this lie, fully, completely, with no exit plan or strategy.”
Krug added, “I am a coward,” and called on cancel culture to cancel her.
“You should absolutely cancel me, and I absolutely cancel myself,” she said.
The Daily Mail reported that Krug went to an exclusive school in Kansas City and was described by peers as “very political.”
An anonymous source said Krug also boycotted prom and planned a flag burning while at the school. She graduated in 1999.
Her current Bronx, New York, neighbor Anna Anderson said Krug called her “white trash.”
Anmol Goraya, one of Krug’s former students, told CNN she was shocked by the revelation.
“From the moment she came into the classroom, I was in awe of her,” Goraya said. “And I’m just shocked that it was such a complete lie.”
Goraya said that Krug would use a lot of Spanish in her speech, but the exact place the teacher was from changed. She told one class that her family was from the Dominican Republic and another class she was from Puerto Rico.
“It was the last thing on my mind to think she was lying,” Goraya said. “I would think I had the details confused.”
George Washington University spokeswoman Crystal Nosal told CNN that the university is aware of the post and is investigating.
Krug’s admission brings to mind the 2015 case of Rachel Dolezal — a white woman who portrayed herself as black while teaching Africana studies and headed her local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“I just feel like I didn’t mislead anybody; I didn’t deceive anybody,” Dolezal told Vanity Fair in 2015.
“If people feel misled or deceived, then sorry that they feel that way, but I believe that’s more due to their definition and construct of race in their own minds than it is to my integrity or honesty, because I wouldn’t say I’m African American, but I would say I’m black, and there’s a difference in those terms.”
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