We all know what identity theft is, in a world filled with cyber crimes. We’ve all watched horror films with body snatchers as the main villains. Things become far more complicated when we address the issue of humans who, for a host of warped reasons, assume a false racial or ethnic identity.
Such is the case of Professor Jessica A. Krug, who is currently an Associate Professor of African American history at George Washington University. Krug has for years portrayed herself as Black, and Afro-Latina, while publishing her academic work, receiving grant funding, teaching and also acting as a Afro-Latina political activist from the Bronx under the pseudonym “Jess La Bombalera,” all the while hiding her real self — a white woman from Kansas City.
Her exposure as a fraud, has unleashed a firestorm of pushback on social media and in academia, similar to the exposure of black-passing Rachel Dolezal in 2015.
The critiques of Krug have been very pointed:
There were calls for the university, her employer, to respond.
George Washington University issued a statement on September 4, 2020.
Dear GW Community,
Many of you understandably have many questions in the wake of the Medium post by GW faculty member Jessica Krug. While the university reviews this situation, Dr. Krug will not be teaching her classes this semester. We are working on developing a number of options for students in those classes, which will be communicated to affected students as soon as possible.
We want to acknowledge the pain this situation has caused for many in our community and recognize that many students, faculty, staff and alumni are hurting.
When the news of Krug’s long time masquerade broke on social media, because of an online confession she posted, entitled “The Truth, and the Anti-Black Violence of My Lies,” the immediate response included many questions about why she was “confessing,” and many respondents theorized that she tried to get ahead of the curve of being exposed. In her mea culpa she wrote:
I don’t know how to fix this. I am attempting to lay out a timeline of my deceit to better understand all whom I have violated and how, and to begin to imagine how to restore, to address, to redress… But I can’t fix this.
Really? There are plenty folks wading in with suggestions.
Lisa Betty writes:
I have questions, the most important being: Did Jessica Krug select Black/Hispanic/Latinx as her racial-ethnic identity when applying for jobs, educational scholarships, fellowship, grants, etc? We would like to know. Black women make up about 3% of full-time faculty at degree granting institutions in the United States, white women are 35%. Hispanic/Latinx identified women are also 3%. This 6% total includes women faculty at community colleges, historically Black colleges and universities, and low resourced institutions — so we can expect this percentage to be lower when accounting for their presence at predominantly white and well resourced institutions.
Black women, in particular, are discriminated against at high rates in all levels of academia from graduate school admissions, funding (scholarship, fellowships, research grants), publication, hiring, and the tenure process — the case of Black Latinx scholar Dr. Lorgia García Peña being the most recent and well known.
Krug took up space, opportunity, time, and money. I call for reparations.
I call reparations for every teaching position.
I call reparations for every fellowship.
I call reparations for every scholarship.
I call reparations for every research grant.
I call reparations for every paid and unpaid speaking engagement.
I call reparations for every article published.
I call reparations for books published and under contract.
I call reparations for every Black and Brown community she had access to.
I call reparations for every Black person that ever confided in her.
I call for reparations.
In a Twitter thread, Dr. Yomaira Figueroa, associate professor of Afro Diaspora Studies in the department of English and the African American & African Studies program at Michigan State University, who tweets as @DrYoFiggy, provided some background about why Krug confessed.
The only reason Jessica Krug finally admitted to this lie is bec on Aug 26th one very brave very BLACK Latina junior scholar approached two senior Black Latina scholars & trusted them enough to do the research & back her up. Those two scholars made phone calls & reached out to...
other senior scholars & institutions with proof. There was no witch hunt, but there was a need to draw the line. Krug got ahead of the story because she was caught & she knew the clock was ticking bec folks started to confront her & ask questions. DO NOT BELIEVE FOR ONE SECOND..
that she would have come out with the truth on her own. She made a living & a whole life out of parroting Black Rican trauma and survival. As a Black Rican I am PISSED.
The other thing is that, let historians tell it, her work is actually good, chick is smart- so why lie?
why chase the extra clout of being a hood raised Black Boricua? Why put on that life that isn't yours & attempt to play it so well that you block, beat, and bully others? incl shit talking Black women? Whiteness is a hell of a drug.
But also she needs to account for everything
she has taken, everything she has gained, all that she stole by creating this identity & shrouding herself with Black & Latinx folks who defended, supported, and lifted her up. What does restitution look like when she won awards, grants, & fellowships for underrepresented folks?
I can only imagine how her actual friends & community must feel right now. Gutted.
I count myself *lucky* to not know her personally.
She gaslit folks I know, was openly racist, & manipulated so many people.
One person's lies affect so many folks.
Dr. Yarimar Bonilla, Professor in the Department of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Hunter College also weighed in, in a Twitter thread.
Many are asking themselves how
#JessicaKrug managed to fool anyone into believing she was Afro Latina. Well, let me tell you: we were both fellows at the Schomburg and I suppose she fooled me. (a thread 🧵)
I mean, I don't feel hurt or betrayed in this moment because the truth is I always knew something was off with her, but I thought the pathologies she displayed were the product of systemic violence, and not of her twisted racial fantasies...
See, not only did she try to "pass" (we need a better term here - masquerade?) as Latina from "El Barrio" but she also told us her parents were addicts and even said that there were overdoses and suicide attempts happening during the fellowship period.
She always dressed/acted inappropriately—she'd show up to a 10am scholars' seminar dressed for a salsa club etc—but was so over the top strident and "woker-than-though" that I felt like I was trafficking in respectability politics when I cringed at her MINSTREL SHOW.
In that sense, she did gaslight us. Not only into thinking she was a WOC but also into thinking we were somehow both politically and intellectually inferior.
While claiming to be a child of addicts from the hood, she boasted about speaking numerous languages, reading ancient texts, and mastering disciplinary methods—while questioning the work of real WOC doing transformative interdisciplinary work that she PANNED.
She consistently trashed WOC and questioned their scholarship. She even described my colleague Marisa Fuentes as a "slave catcher" in the introduction to her book. Kind of amazing how white supremacy means she even thought she was better at being a person of color than we were.
That pathology remains evident in her mea culpa article. Somehow she manages to remain ultra woke and strident, still on her political moral high horse, calling for white scholars to be cancelled --in this instance her own white self.
She says she doesn't know what accountability looks like—well, clearly, she needs to quit her job (a job that if I am not mistaken was a diversity hire) since no scholar can be respected when they engage in this kind of fraud.
Second, she needs to start a fellowship fund for afro latina scholars, and fund it with at least as much money as she obtained through her lies.
Third, she needs to stop with the Dolezal-splaining about how wrong her actions and philosophizing about her punishment. I'm not investing a single drop of energy punishing her— esp not in the middle of a pandemic. Instead, I will recommit to radical self/community care.
#bye
For me, as a Black-American New Yorker, who has had to face being constantly mis-identified as a Black Puerto Rican (which I politely correct) simply because of my history as a member of the Young Lords Party, her fraud goes beyond the ivy halls of academic attainment since she also has portrayed herself as a political activist. You can support Puerto Rico, you can oppose gentrification, you can support the causes of people of color without pretending to be a member of a specific ethnic or racial group.
The deception is also unnecessary in academia. There are highly regarded white scholars who teach Black studies.
In her “woke” pseudo Bronx-accented Zoom testimony to the NYC City Council she managed to disparage two real politicians; former City Council speaker Melissa Mark Vivarito, who is Puerto Rican, and Jumaane Williams, New York City Public Advocate, who is Black.
In order to bolster her Puerto Rican “cred” Krug also passed herself off as a “salsa instructor, which many social media comments mocked after viewing a video of her acting as a teacher.
As East Harlem filmmaker Andrew Padilla pointed out — her less than stellar dancing ability did not out her as not Puerto Rican, since not every Puerto Rican can dance.
My problem with her fake salsa credentials was the fact that she was actually getting paid to teach latin dance, exhibiting zero skill, in a city with a long tradition of salsa dancing (and teaching) by some of the best dancers in the world, who are Puerto Rican, Black and white.
Puerto Rican actress and comedian Suni Reyes, provided some comic relief for folks caught up in the reactions to Krug’s outing.
On a more serious note, Krug’s deception has also raised the ugly specter of colorism and privilege with the Latinx community, where lighter-skinned or white-passing Latinas are elevated over their sisters of a darker hue. Sadly this is all too true in academia, and Dr. Figueroa posted a thread with the work of Afro-Latinas, and asked other readers to join in and post other work that needs more exposure.
I added my suggestion to the list.
I hope that a positive response to all the ugly Krug has unleashed, is an awareness of the challenges faced by Afro-Latinas, and not just in academia.