In an academic version of the Rachel Dozezal controversy, the New York Times is reporting that George Washington University is investigating the bizarre case of George Washington associate professor Jessica A. Krug who admitted in a Medium post Thursday that, despite publicly identifying as a black woman, she is in fact a white Jewish child from the suburbs of Kansas City. Krug has called herself a “cultural leech” and announced that she was “cancelling herself.” The Chronicle of Higher Education stated that some of the positions that she secured in teaching were due to her claimed minority status.
The case rekindles the tension in academic over claims of minority status, including the controversy surrounding the long-claims of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) who also taught at George Washington that she was a Native American. Much of our minority status designations are based on such self-identifications. The Census Bureau approach is based solely on self identification. Since 2000, it has allowed people to check multiple boxes for races and ethnicities. Brown University attracted attention for proposing a pure self identification system for “people of color.”
Krug, 39, wrote a Medium post titled “The Truth, and the Anti-Black Violence of My Lies.” She revealed what she described as a life built on a “napalm toxic soil of lies.” That career include different claims of minority status from African to Caribbean to Puerto Rican roots as well as being raised in a poor family in the projects. This background gave her greater credence in writing as a “historian of politics, ideas, and cultural practices in Africa and the African Diaspora.”
Krug has a Ph.D. and is the author of the book “Fugitive Modernities: Kisama and the Politics of Freedom,” according to her GW faculty profile. She was also a Diversity Achievement Scholar at Portland State and an Advanced Opportunity Fellow at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
She wrote “To an escalating degree over my adult life, I have eschewed my 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 US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness. I have built my life on a violent anti-Black lie, and I have lied in every breath I have taken.”
In a culturally ironic twist, she then declared that she was going to publicly commit self-cancelling: “I am a coward,” she writes, and then repeats it. “You should absolutely cancel me, and I absolutely cancel myself.”
Notably, she insisted that she wanted to be held accountable. It is unclear legally what form such accountability could take. Securing minority positions or benefits can be fraudulent like those at Wisconsin. However, the benefits (as discussed in the Warren controversy) can be less direct or easy to isolate for academics. As with “stolen valor cases,” the most common punishment is public recrimination and isolation.
Krug should now be exported to the African continent and experience first hand just what’s it’s like to take a job that belonged to someone else. If she wants to live a black life, she should do so without the privileges that she so brazenly clawed for and received.
What is it about these identity thefts that think they are some sort of privileged person? And you notice that the 2 persons making the headlines were both women? So, can they be believed? Can they believed for anything they say? NOT ANY MORE!
Krug has resigned.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/jessica-krug-resigns-from-position-at-gwu/2020/09/09/d4cf7394-f2d8-11ea-bc45-e5d48ab44b9f_story.html
Herman Glenn Carroll aka H.G. Carrillo, the black writer who pretended to be Cuban and who recently died, was also employed at GWU.
Jonathan, might other applicants for positions to which she was appointed have cause for legal action against her, individually or a class? How about a public interest case? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_interest_law
Senator Elizabeth Warren said that according to her family’s oral history, she had a Native American ancestor, and DNA testing confirmed that this is true.
What about all the false statements Trump has made in his designing his ‘self made man’ image? He did not start with a ‘couple million’ dollar loan from his father. His father bankrolled/signed for a 75 mil project that Trump did, the renovation of a building in Manhattan. The development costs on a project this size would have ranged from 15% to 25%, not counting the money Trump would have pocketed under the table. Trump only made it on his Daddy’s money, reputation, and contacts. Trump with the same ego would have been flogging time shares in Miami without all the was handed to him. He did grow up in the business, however, and knew stuff. Trump’s a self made buffoon and poltroon, but not a man.
Did you know that most second generation entrepreneurs go out of business?
Just plain stupid
and DNA testing confirmed that this is true.
She wasn’t trading in recipes for ‘pow-wow chow’ because of an ancestor 10 generations back. You cannot stop lying.
She plagiarized some of those family Indian recipes word for word from a French chef. Theft actually.
I am genetically more American Indian than she is and I would have been ashamed to trade on that for a preference.