A White Woman and Professor in US Fooled Everyone by Claiming to be Black Her Whole Life

In a shocking revelation, a reputed activist of colour and professor of African American History in the United States has admitted that she is indeed white. Admitting that most of her adult life and relationships were based on a "napalm toxic soil of lies",

Jessica Krug revealed that she had been pretending to be black for all her adult life, despite actually being the daughter of white parents.

"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 the Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness," Krug revealed in her blog post on Medium. Krug is currently a professor of African American History at George Washington University

'La Bombalera'

Krug had previously claimed to be of Afro-Puerto Rican descent and was a regular among activist circles in the Bronx where she also lived. She was known for her bold rhetoric against 'White Americans'.

Known as 'Jessica La Bombalera' or simply 'Jessa Bombalera'among activists in the Spanish Harlem neighbourhoods of New York and her followers as, Krug delivered a speech at a New York City Council Zoom meeting from El Barrio in June in which she accused white New Yorkers of neglecting her neighbourhood.

"I wanna call out all these white New Yorkers who waited four hours with us to be able to speak and then did not yield their time for Black and Brown indigenous New Yorkers," she had said.

Krug's announcement of her true identity came in the wake of the launch of her book 'Fugitive Realities'.

The professor dedicated the book to "My ancestors, unknown, unnamed, who bled life into a future they had no reason to believe could or should exist. My brother, the fastest, the smartest, the most charming of us all. Those whose names I cannot say for their own safety, whether in my barrio, in Angola, or in Brazil."

In the Medium post, Krug revealed that she was indeed from Kansas and claimed to have lived through childhood trauma and mental health issues. She did not, however, use them as an excuse for her presence.

"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,” she said.

'Dazed and gaslit'

While the news of La Bombalera's true identity quickly went viral following her blog post, many of her followers were left shocked and dazed. Many couldn't believe that the feisty activist that they had followed and admired had indeed been lying to them for years.

Many claimed that she was "cosplaying" as a black person and dug up old videos in which she spoke with a clearly stylised and appropriated accent to appear black.

The case is eerily reminiscent of racial activist Rachel Dolezal who caused controversy for falsely claiming she was black. Dolezal, who was the president of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, resigned in 2015 following the uproar when media reports disclosed her parents were white.

Dolezal has since maintained that she identifies as Black and even had her name changed to Nkechi Amare Diallo, which is more rooted in African heritage and language.

READ: The Strange Case of Twitter's Favourite LGBTQ Professor Who Died of COVID-19: She Never Existed

In a more recent and unrelated incident, a bisexual woman who was was popular as a professor and advocate for women and LGBTQIA in the science world turned out to be fictitious after claims that she had passed away due to COVID-19. Fans and followers of the popular account 'Sciencing_bi' were shocked and hurt to find out that the account was actually run by another woman called BethAnn McLaughlin.