White professor's startling confession: 'I've been pretending to be black'
A white US professor of African American history has reportedly confessed she’s been pretending to be black.
Jessica A Krug, an associate professor at George Washington University, reportedly wrote on blog Medium she’s been pretending to be black for years.
In her post, Ms Krug claims she adopted “North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness” but “had absolutely no right to do so”.
“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,” she wrote.
“People have fought together with me and have fought for me, and my continued appropriation of a Black Caribbean identity is not only, in the starkest terms, wrong — unethical, immoral, anti-Black, colonial — but it means that every step I’ve taken has gaslighted those whom I love.”
She added the reason she adopted a black identity is because of mental health issues.
Ms Krug also referred to herself as a “cultural leech”.
“I have thought about ending these lies many times over many years, but my cowardice was always more powerful than my ethics. I know right from wrong. I know history. I know power,” she wrote.
“I am a coward.”
Ms Krug received financial support to write a book about slave trade from Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, according to The Guardian.
It’s not known why she confessed but Dr Yomaira Figueroa, an associate professor of Afro Diaspora Studies at Michigan State University, claims Ms Krug had been found out.
“There was no witch hunt, but there was a need to draw the line,” she tweeted.
“Krug got ahead of the story because she was caught and she knew the clock was ticking.”
Mr Krug is yet to publicly comment on the article.
George Washington University told the BBC it’s aware of the article but would not comment further.
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