Her revelation was as bizarre as her prior pretense at being black, using the vernacular of the street as heard through the ears of a Jewish girl from Kansas.
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 not only claimed these identities as my own when I had absolutely no right to do so — when doing so is the very epitome of violence, of thievery and appropriation, of the myriad ways in which non-Black people continue to use and abuse Black identities and cultures — but I have formed intimate relationships with loving, compassionate people who have trusted and cared for me when I have deserved neither trust nor caring. People have fought together with me and have fought for me, and my continued appropriation of a Black Caribbean identity is not only, in the starkest terms, wrong — unethical, immoral, anti-Black, colonial — but it means that every step I’ve taken has gaslighted those whom I love.
First the confession. Then the blame, undiagnosed mental illness, which is a fashionable excuse. Then the denial that the excuse is an excuse.
But mental health issues can never, will never, neither explain nor justify, neither condone nor excuse, that, in spite of knowing and regularly critiquing any and every non-Black person who appropriates from Black people, my false identity was crafted entirely from the fabric of Black lives. That I claimed belonging with living people and ancestors to whom and for whom my being is always a threat at best and a death sentence at worst.
I am not a culture vulture. I am a culture leech.
All of this would just be chalked up as a crazy Jewish white woman from Kansas who decided to pretend to be a black woman, all good for a head shaking and big sigh, except for two problems. The first is that Krug, under the name Jess La Bombera, was a prof at George Washington University.
Krug has a Ph.D. and is the author of the book “Fugitive Modernities: Kisama and the Politics of Freedom,” which “interrogates the political practices and discourses through which those who fled from slavery and the violence of the slave trade in Angola forged coherent political communities outside of, and in opposition to, state politics,” according to her GW faculty profile.
And being a woman of color, she was entitled to be not merely a loud voice in the room, but one entitled to demand that others shut up and listen.
The white college professor who admitted to posing as a black woman allegedly once went on a profanity-laden tirade at a City Council hearing, in which she spoke in a fake accent and ripped New Yorkers who talked about the police in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Rachel Dolezal wanted to be black, and so she was, until she wasn’t. Jessica Krug wanted to be black and so she was, until she wasn’t. Her harangue against herself admitting she’s just a liar received thousand of “claps” on Medium, because even fakers pretending to be black deserve empathy for the bold admission that they’re liars, plus they have mental illness which makes everything excusable.
That one person engaged in this ridiculous fraud, whether because of mental illness or she just thought she could gain a leg up in the victim hierarchy and be really cool at parties, is wild enough, but still just one person.
That the social justice excuse machine enabled and protected her posing as a black woman, on the other hand, even to the extent of her teaching students at a legit university, and castigating white people at a New York City council meeting for taking up all the time that should have gone to black voices like hers, reveals the joke.
You’ve got an excuse for everything, and that’s how Jess La Bombalera pulled it off. And you gushed at the woke faux black woman taking the council to task with her black street talk and beating up those bad white folks. She may be crazy, but you made her happen.
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Her next book, a steaming pile of horseshit that will be gobbled up by the woke faster than tofu burgers at a vegan picnic, will be titled “Not Black, Like Me”
Guitar Dave, for those of us old enough to remember the book “Black Like Me,” you made me burst out with a laugh.
John Howard Griffin.
“The completeness of this transformation appalled me. It was unlike anything I had imagined. I became two men, the serving one, and the one who panicked, who felt Negroid even to the depths of my entrails. I felt the beginings of great loneliness, not because I was a Negro, but because the man I had been, the self I knew, was hidden in the flesh of another.“
Your quote convinced me to grab the book on Amazon, and I just read it in one sitting. What a fascinating thing!
Gustav Mahler.
“ I beg of you… never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.“
“That I claimed belonging with living people and ancestors to whom and for whom my being is always a threat at best and a death sentence at worst.”
Holy shit, that’s some next level racist hatred right there. That mindset could explain any number of vicious random crimes on unsuspecting victims, as it has in the past for white supremacists. Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of “Lunatic Street Ravings or College Employment Equity Statement?”
She had a Ph.D. She had to be really, really smart.
It’s the most brilliant packaging of that message I’ve yet seen.
People keep screaming without any clue what they’re talking about. At least she thought ahead and made some “appeal to authority” cred, to rely on.
It takes a certain amount of courage To get up in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against, Like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on.
But to do so as the minority? She deserves a monument so people can tear it down.
How well would Lehrer be received today?
On a sliding scale, I’d put him somewhere between Mao and Lenny Bruce.
But, if your kid is still up near Cambridge, he can ask him.
Written by Harvard student Jeffrey Toobin, no less. That was pretty amazing. Clearly, my son went to MIT too late.
He would be received with equal hatred from all sides.
He would be right behind me, and in front of you, on the line to enter the Gulag.
“She may be crazy, but you made her happen.”
Me: Not guilty!!!!!
Denial is the surest sign of guilt.
–Jess La Bombalera
If US institutions are systemically racist, why did Krug try to pass herself off as black instead of remaining white (these days, “Jewish” is synonymous with white or white adjacent)? Why did Elizabeth Warren try to pass herself off as Native instead of remaining white?
We may never know. /s/
Krug was a professor at GW under her own name. “Jess La Bombera” was a different persona that she used to address the City Council.
I’m shocked she got away with this for so long, especially with that horrendous accent…she sounds like the president of a Choate Hall’s Eminem Fan Club.
In all that I’ve read, I have yet to see anyone critique what she taught in the classroom, or how she was received / congratulated by students and fellow faculty.
In this day and age where the slightest misstep can land someone in cancellation, I find this blind spot highly interesting.
Well, they can’t very well assail her for stealing Black Privilege, being as that’s not a thing. It is probably even appropriate to applaud her inspiring message, which show that it is possible to succeed as a black person. Even if you aren’t a real black person.
Obviously, it’s much easier going the other way.
“it is possible to succeed as a black person. Even if you aren’t a real black person.”
That’s just more white privilege… It shines though even your completely black persona. Than again, it makes any black who isn’t 100% black look particularly unsuccessful.
This very strange stew involving blacks and jews really needs some humour involving the very people banned on here by our esteemed host. That video of Herr Adolf going berserk should to be re-written by someone with a very sharp wit.
Don’t go there.
It’s kind of funny, and kind of sad. She manages to do the right thing, but for entirely the wrong reason. The problem isn’t that she “appropriated culture”–that’s a completely nonsensical concept. The problem is much more simple: she was living a lie. She was lying to everyone around her, lying about who she was and where she came from. That’s why it was wrong. Not because it hurt people who were actually from the background she pretended to be (it didn’t), but because she was a lying liar who was lying.
It does, though, suggest that even the woke don’t believe their own rhetoric.
As long as the victimhood of last resort is mental illness, nothing is so awful that you can’t emerge the hero of your own story.
Why is transgender a good thing, transracial a bad thing, and trans-age (e.g. Emile Ratelband) an object of ridicule?
Transgender has a better publicist.