White Professor Who Faked Blackness Quits George Washington University Position
Jessica Krug, the George Washington University professor who revealed last week that she’s been faking being Black for years in a lengthy, emotional apology letter, has resigned her position, the school announced Wednesday (Sept. 9) in a tweet.
In a Medium post published September 3, Krug, who was lying about being a Black and Latina woman who went by the name "Jess La Bombalera," revealed herself to be a white Jewish woman from Kansas. She said that she had been living “a violent anti-Black lie, and I have lied in every breath I have taken.”
She claimed at various points that she was from North Africa, the U.S. and the Caribbean. Also she authored books on the Black diaspora with titles including: Fugitive Modernities: Politics and Identity Outside the State in Kisama, Angola, and The Americas, c. 1594-Present and Fathers of No Nation.
In June, she even went as far as calling into a virtual New York City Council meeting with a phony accent and complaining about gentrification.
“I’m Jess La Bombalera. I’m here in the Barrio, East Harlem,” she said in the call, saying in the Zoom meeting that former council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito ““old my f***ing neighborhood to developers and gentrifiers.
“I also want to call out all these white New Yorkers who waited for hours with us to be able to speak and then did not yield their time to Black and brown indigenous New Yorkers,” Krug said, according to the New York Daily News.
Her neighbors saw the video and recognized her, not as what she said she was, but as a white woman who knows Spanish, and not even as a college professor.
Krug had worked as a professor of African studies for George Washington and was awarded scholarships and fellowships meant for Black scholars. Her listing has been removed from the GWU website.
