MEAWW.COM / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

GWU professor Jessica Krug admits she lied she was Black, Internet tired of ‘mental health’ excuse for racism

Krug, an associate professor at George Washington University, said that her appropriation of a “Black Caribbean identity” was “unethical, immoral, anti-Black, colonial”

In what is a bizarre turn of events, a George Washington University associate professor, after publicly living as a Black woman for years, admitted on Thursday, September 3, that she is actually a White woman, calling herself a “culture leech”. Jessica Krug, in a Medium post titled, ‘The Truth, and the Anti-Black Violence of My Lies’, wrote that she had eschewed her “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 U.S. rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness.”

It’s a case eerily similar to that of former college instructor and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Spokane chapter president Rachel Dolezal, who pretended to be a Black woman, despite being White, for years. Dolezal was outed by her parents. She later referred to herself as “the world’s first trans-black case”.

Krug said that her continued appropriation of a “Black Caribbean identity” was “unethical, immoral, anti-Black, colonial”, adding that “every step I’ve taken has gaslighted those whom I love.” She wrote that mental health issues would likely explain why she had assumed a false identity, but added that “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 further said, “I have built my life on a violent anti-Black lie, and I have lied in every breath I have taken. There are no words in any language to express the depth of my remorse, but then again: there shouldn’t be.”

“The wrath of all whom I’ve harmed, individually and collectively, will never erase the harm I’ve done,” Krug wrote. “Pain and trauma, injustice and violence, aren’t algebra, and there’s nothing to put on the other side of this equals sign but a big, bold void.” She ended her post with, “This isn’t a confession, it isn’t a public relations move, and it damn sure isn’t a shield. It is the truth, though.”

According to a report in The Guardian, in Krug’s book ‘Fugitive Modernities’, published before her confession, she wrote in the acknowledgments: “My ancestors, unknown, unnamed, who bled life into a future they had no reason to believe could or should exist. My brother, the fastest, the smartest, the most charming of us all. Those whose names I cannot say for their own safety, whether in my barrio, in Angola, or in Brazil.” Krug reportedly went by the name Jessica La Bombalera in activist circles.

On Twitter, the anger over Krug’s lies was palpable. One Twitter user wrote, “In the coming months, Jessica Krug will be more proof that it's more profitable to *lie* about being a Black Woman than to actually BE one.”

Another Twitter user asked, “I don’t know about y’all but I wanna cry about this Jessica Krug thing. How many Black people lost out on opportunities because of her? How many people did she bully and demean with her pseudo-Blackness? How do her victims get restitution? Is GWU planning to fire her? So awful.”

Some even shared their own experience with her. One Twitter user wrote, “In my ‘Afro Latinx History’ class, Jessica Krug discussed the dynamics of white scholars engaging in black studies. She really had the audacity to pull up an image of the white woman who won an award over her, illustrating how black scholars are often overlooked in the academy. LOL.”

Another wrote, sharing screenshots of her conversations with Krug, “Three years ago I confronted Jessica Krug (known as Jess Labombalera) on fb. I thought she was white until she was adamantly told me otherwise. After this exchange she blocked me, deleted her fb and pulled out of different grassroots organizing.”

A Twitter user wrote about Krug’s mental health reasoning, “I am very tired of white people blaming mental illness as to why they did something racist. As someone who recently had to put their spouse in a mental health facility, mental illness does not cause or heighten racism. Stop shifting blame Jessica Krug.”

"I hate when people weaponize mental health concerns to justify their racist ass bullsh^+ and then to read this too?!? People get fired for less. Let alone canceled. Give everyone back everything you took, Jessica Krug. Including time and air," wrote another Twitter user.

Another Twitter user noted, "One thing bothering me about Jessica Krug's story is her quick, public pivoting to a 'mental health' realm- clockwork. Moves like that emphasize her as 'a victim' and not on the whole f**ked system of 'academia' & professional clout networks that typically absolve ppl like her."