A George Washington University Professor Lied About Being Black

Culture - 1 year ago

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Source: Duke University Press

In a Medium post, professor Jessica Krug revealed she went under the fake name Jess La Bombalera.

On Thursday, a George Washington University professor dropped a bombshell on her Medium account with a shocking confession. Jessica Krug, otherwise known as Puerto Rican Bronx native Jess La Bombalera, admitted to pretending to be Afro-Latina throughout the course of her career.

“I am not a culture vulture,” she wrote, “I am a culture leech. I have thought about ending these lies many times over many years, but my cowardice was always more powerful than my ethics.”

Krug revealed that she’s actually a white Jewish woman from suburban Kansas City. The scandal is being compared to Rachel Dolezal back in 2018.

WOW.

So a white Jewish woman from Kansas City has been lying her whole adult life by pretending to be black.

The Truth, and the Anti-Black Violence of My Lies by Jessica A. Krug https://t.co/rw8yVqlPfP

— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) September 3, 2020

According to her profile in George Washington’s Department of History, Krug’s areas of expertise were Africa, Latin America, African American History, Imperialism and Colonialism. In her career, she published papers like “Social Dismemberment, Social (Re)membering: Obeah Idioms, Kromanti Identities, and the Trans-Atlantic Politics of Memory.”

Family,

I am in a state of complete and utter shock and sadness. Jess La Bombera, an activist who I often deferred to and stepped aside and gave the mic to on this platform, just revealed that she is a white woman who has been pretending to be Black.

— Son of Baldwin (Robert Jones, Jr.) (@SonofBaldwin) September 3, 2020

In 2018, she published a book titled Fugitive Modernities: Politics and Identity Outside the State in Kisama, Angola, and the Americas. At the time, she was in the process of publishing a second book, Fathers of No Nation. According to the Washington Post, Jessica Krug was named a finalist for book awards named after Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass for her work.

Shortly after the post, video surfaced of her contributing to a New York City City Council Testimony back in June.

“I should absolutely be cancelled,” Krug continued. “No. I don’t write in passive voice, ever…you should absolutely cancel me, and I absolutely cancel myself. What does that mean? I don’t know…I have built my life on a violent anti-Black lie, and I have lied in every breath I have taken.”