Jesica Krug - white Jewish Woman pretended to be black.

[SentientAndCognisant]

Ms Krug, a Jewish woman form Kansa purported to be a Black woman and was a Professor of AfricanAmerica Hostory at George Washington University . Teaching classes and supervision grad and undergrad students in African American History

She was also an activist who posted and participated in rallies and events as Jessica La Bombalera. Demonstrating against the gentrification of East Harlem, proclaiming it to be her neighbourhood

Essentially she has gaslight,lied and assumed an identity that is not hers. In doing so,other candidates were denied opportunities,remuneration. She has assumed an identity and heritage that was not hers to assume

Exposed by a student who had the courage to confide in other teaching staff

My ex FIL was the head of the school of African and West Indies Studies and he's a white man
Was that in the US? There definitely seems to be a thread running through the discussion on Twitter that there is an expectation in the US that lecturers in her subject would be POC. Some are even joking, she should have come to the UK because we don't have that requirement.

Why don't we ever hear about black people identifying as white?

It's often called white-passing and there is quite a lot written about it and it's role in employment over the decades.

As for Dr.? Krug, while there are many great white academics in these areas of history and anthropology, it does seem like she took a place and possibly funding that was reserved for academics from other marginalized groups. With the issues with academia, and the social sciences in particular as they are, I suspect there are many more out there. There are at least social incentives to be seen as making it and speaking out from multiple forms of oppression. It's harder to figure out what can be done about it as shown by the Irish actor, other mixed race people, and the long history of white passing in some places, how we've come to classify race on traits and experiences isn't solid at all.

@Durgasarrow

How could this not be appropriate to compare to transgenderism? This is exactly what transgenderism is. Identity theft.

When the 'ID as black vs trans' debate arises it brings out the most defensive in people who disagree with one but not the other. It's exactly the same appropriation of identity, but those who vehemently defend the latter do not like this argument used as a mirror. The main retort is as we've seen above - 'Western women are privileged unlike black people'. We know this simply isn't true, we know that both groups have and still face horrific abuse based on their genetics and biology every day, yet for some reason when it comes to self ID one is abhorrent and the other is just the future of a kind and inclusive humanity.

It's all under the same umbrella of self identification, but it seems in terms of self ID the line is different even if the consequences are not.

@skippy67

Why don't we ever hear about black people identifying as white? And being appointed to roles where the race they identify as is key to said appointment?

Other posters have addressed this, but there's also a jokey bit in the tv show Atlanta about this.

Being familiar with the Rachel Dolezal situation, I'm not massively surprised this happens but the way she's written about it is quite interesting.

Well this woman is clearly a fantasist, and very manipulative, but equally she looks like a white woman to me and probably to everyone, so it's interesting how " identifying" as something nowadays makes people just nod along, and no one says.."hang on.."
In my workplace we are asked what race we identify as, not what we are, so it's written in, institutionally, to lots of HR policies for example.
Equally there is an expectation that we are almost entirely shaped by our ethnic heritage to a degree that I find stifling and encouraging of stereotypes.
We are getting to a situation where we are encouraged to choose our identity, and play that out in public, and this ridiculous woman is just the end result.

After thinking at length about Rachel Dolezal and now this individual, I think i generally feel that if someone wants to identify as another culture, race or gender, live a quiet life (or a high profile life for reasons not related to their gender or race) and slot into a community where they feel accepted (perhaps when they never felt properly accepted before) then alright. OK, they may not have the authentic lived experience but are they really causing any harm?

It is when they pursue status and financial reward from their new identity that it starts to rankle with me. That is to say, trans women winning womens sports, and white people presenting as black gaining scholarships and high profile positions in organisations such as the NAACP.

One can support an equality movement as a member of another group, assimilate with or study a culture. This feels more like infiltration.

A large point is that it's not reciprocal in the cases of Ms Krug and Dolezal. None but the lightest skinned of black people could 'pass' as white and that makes it feel dishonest and disingenuous to me. I fully accept it may be based on childhood trauma which I sympathise with hugely, but largely, a black person with mental health issues could not escape by publically claiming to be white. This shows a certain self serving artificiality in their support of the black rights movement, kind of just wanting to be part of something outside of the world they grew up in, to prove they can become a big noise within it, and blackness happened to be the thing they alighted on, rather than, say, a religion. This kind of seems to dismiss the fact that black rights issues are real life, serious stuff. Their mental health issues must be quite deep rooted not to see this and again, I sympathise.

Bad behaviour, but it is not something to use to bash trans people! In fact, racial and ethnic identity is fluid, both in terms of most (all?) people being of mixed ethnic origin if you go back far enough, and in terms of people having multiple identities and choosing which of them is most salient. For example, one might be English, British and Europaean: which of these identities one emphasizes may be highly influenced by whether one is a Brexiter or a Remainer! One might be a descendant of Irish emigrants to America, and choose to emphasize that one is Irish, Catholic, white, American or (say) a New Yorker.. A little self-deception can sometimes be mixed in: I am told that my English-Canadian great-grandfather was rather prejudiced against the English, and claimed to be of Irish origin, though there is no evidence that he had any Irish ancestry at all. When it becomes ugly is usually when people in authority choose to define your identity for nefarious purposes; e.g. under 'Jim Crow' a person with one black great-grandparent was often defined as black and denied educational opportunities, and could be e.g. expelled from college if they were discovered to be 'passing as white'. To go back to this particular woman, her misdeed was not 'self-identification' but pretending to belong to a disadvantaged group in order to claim compensatory rights to which she was not entitled under the law or university policies. So her offence was equivalent to a rich person pretending to be poor in order to claim benefits to which they were not entitled. It's a form of fraud. But it's not something that we should use to condemn trans people, or even people who identify with an ethnic group to which they only questionably belong, unless they are doing so to claim privileges or benefits to which they are not entitled.

@ddl1, it was only a matter of time before someone tried to defend racial identity appropriation wasn't it? Either it is wholly ok to ID as whatever you feel like in terms of race, sex or otherwise regardless of the genetics you were born with. Or none of self ID is acceptable and people need to accept themselves, their bodies, their personalities as their own without trying to label themselves as a group they have no business labeling themselves as based on 'a feeling of belonging'.

What's the fact she's Jewish got to do with this? There are plenty of black Jews. I know some personally. Leave Jews out of this.

People are who they say they are!
White black people are black people!

Also curious why you didn't post in AIBU last year when a Latino woman lied about being Jewish while literally standing for office in New York - or it is it only when Jews do supposedly socially unacceptable things you get angry?

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/who-is-julia-salazar

Race is an entirely human construct
people can be mixed race

Sex is an entirely biological reality
one cannot be part female or male - the Chromosomes do not lie

self ID is a very bad move

I too am fascinated by this, partly because of the questions it raises about my own assumptions but also because it seems so bizarre.

I am actually wondering though how common this is. Completely understand there are difference to the Rachel Dolezal case but wonder why in both instances they seemed determined to occupy such public prominent positions. I think both put themselves in roles which gave status within the community in which they were trying to assimilate as opposed to playing quieter parts in their community.

Are there lots of people doing this that are leading quiet lives, or is part of the drive to become public figures?

I can see some of her motivations but I’m really intrigued to see how this plays out. Unfortunately I can’t see any much happiness ahead for her.

@SentientAndCognisant

Central is the invention of a backstory. The gas lighting Financial gain Claiming a lived experience that was not hers

And this is precisely what men who self id as women are doing. ALL of your points, and as others have explained, if that is OK, then so is the situation that you are aggrieved about.

For me the issue around self-id has never been that I mind somebody choosing to identify with different to how they were born or grew up, but the many steps that they take to gain advantage. And that is not OK.

Race is an entirely human construct

It's not though, as with sex there are two variations of biological and sociological - though race doesn't have the gender equivalent term. There's race that's biological, a determination of skin colour, physiology, prone to certain illness or other biological factors depending on your race, and then there's the socialogical race where human-made stereotypes and prejudice come into play to
put people into personality boxes much, much like gender.

@PrincessZog

What's the fact she's Jewish got to do with this? There are plenty of black Jews. I know some personally. Leave Jews out of this.

As explained above, in her Medium article one of the first sentences Krug writes begins "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" so I think people are just accurately quoting 'white Jewish' as the way she herself describes... herself. (mangled grammar, sorry!)

OP, I think the reason some posters are raising the Jewish issue is because in your earliest posts you defined her as solely being Jewish, omitting the White element.

I appreciate you included it in the title and have used white in your latter posts. Also most news about this includes details of her being Jewish specifically because Krug uses the term to describe herself, so it’s not your doing.

However, some posters need to appreciate that Krug’s narrative is that a motivating factor for her is she was not accepted by the white community as she is Jewish. So while the crux of the issue is she’s white and claimed to be black, her being Jewish is part of the story.

I am Jewish (Sephardi) and struggle what to identify myself as!

Mouthbreathing
Race is a construct because you can be multiple races at the same time

four grandparents of different origins >> one person with characteristics of multiple "races"

If it’s ok for boys to say they are girls and enter female athletics and win scholarships to universities and deny a girl a place she would have got if she wasn’t up against a man then I don’t see why this is such a huge surprise.
If you can call yourself anything and to deny it is an offence then why not this.

Who knows, this woman might have done an Ancestry test

Not had a test done but mine should if I am correct in who my relatives are would say I am predominantly North African with some southern and Eastern European in the mix

I am white. My sister is not.

@BigBadVoodooHat

Why not? If someone lied to claim a professional advantage, why should someone else be expected to collude in keeping that secret for them?

You are misreading me here. I 100% don't think the student should collude, at all. But putting myself in their shoes, in a post-Dolezal world, I would hardly need to be courageous to report my professor for masquerading as black. We all know what the outcome would be, and it wouldn't be bad for the student. It would be very, very bad for the professor.

Has anyone come back to explain why this is bad but men self identifying as a woman is fine?

@StealthPolarBear

Has anyone come back to explain why this is bad but men self identifying as a woman is fine?

Nope

How strange

Just watched that video. Who the FUCK thought she was black?

She makes Ali G look like Malcolm X.

Weird I’d say stealth