The Damage Caused by Jessica Krug Goes Much Deeper
Jessica Krug’s false claim to be a Black woman was not a victimless crime. On the contrary, says author Yomaira Figueroa, an Afro-Latin associate professor of Afro Diaspora Studies at Michigan State University, her fraud effectively stole one of the handful of university teaching posts available to Black women in the U.S.
In the fall of 2017, there were 1.5 million faculty members in at degree-granting postsecondary institutions. Of that more than one million pool of people, only 3 percent of all full-time faculty were Black males, Black females, Hispanic males, and Hispanic females, according to research from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Jessica A. Krug, a self-described white Jewish woman from Kansas City, spent the better part of her adult life posing as a Black woman. The George Washington University professor confessed on Medium to posing as an Afro-Latina woman from the Bronx. She resigned this week from the university from her position as a professor of African and Latin American studies.
jessica krug's old author bio is, uh, something else pic.twitter.com/YMKW8eHiI0
— graham starr (@GrahamStarr) September 3, 2020
Yomaira Figueroa, an Afro-Latin associate professor of Afro Diaspora Studies and author, spoke with AJ+ about how Krug’s faked identity was a smack in the face that hurt Black Latinx and Black people.
“I found that her deception was disgusting,” she told reporter Allison Vosloh. “At the same time, she took up the very little spaces available to Black women and Latina women in the academy.”
In 2019, Krug was a finalist for both the Harriet Tubman Prize and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. Both prizes are meant to recognize top books published on slavery, abolition and the slave trade.
“One of the knee jerk reactions to scandals like this and revelations, like this is like a more intense scrutinizing and policing of Black and Latinx faculty,”
“I don't think that communities of color need more policing around their identities,” Figueroa told AJ+. “There was no need for her to take up this identity, and so it is appalling that she did so.”
Produced by: Allison Vosloh and Abby Rogers
You might enjoy
