Saturday - September 12, 2020 - Jessica A. Krug’s resignation: “Don’t just talk about it, be about it.”

I’ll admit that when I heard about Jessica Krug’s resignation from her post as a Black-studies professor at George Washington University, I did so with delight. Krug, who last week revealed that she had been hiding the fact that she is white, had previously spent over three decades self-identifying as Black, Latina, or a combination of the two.

Although I’m still processing what Krug’s admission (if one can call it that) means to me, this much I know for sure: her revelation and subsequent resignation (the University would have removed her had she not resigned) signifies that personally and collectively, we’re being pushed to think more deeply about the meaning of our lives; the origins of our identify; as well as the intersections and parallel lines that create the space between these two. Myself, of course, included.

Her resignation suggests that we’ve reached a point in time where hiding behind whatever masks and veils that we’ve decided to put up around ourselves is becoming less and less possible. Personally and collectively, our false ways of living, moving through the world, and interacting with each other are being chipped away –––– bit by bit and moment by moment -––– so consistently and so forcefully that eventually, only our truths will be able to emerge.

I first heard of Krug while reading Lauren Michele Jackson’s masterful essay from The New Yorker, “The Layered Deceptions of Jessica Krug, The Black Studies Professor who Hid that she is White.”

While reading through Jackson’s essay, I clicked over to the now famous clip of Krug “giving the people what they want,” by way of speaking during a virtual New York City Council Hearing, which took place in June.

In the clip, Krug speaks of the need to not just defund, but instead, to abolish the NYPD. “They’re a colonial occupation force,” she says as she is, presumably, walking through “her neighborhood” the Bronx (she actually grew up in Kansas City, Missouri) and staring into the video feature on her phone, all the while donning neon-purple-shaded aviator sunglasses. “If this city is for ‘us,’” she says, “The NYPD can’t stay.”

As I watched (and now have re-watched) the clip, knowing that her accent and her demeanor were put-on and for show, I also wondered which of the words that she spoke she actually believed in.

Perhaps the delight that I felt, as a Black man, learning of this un-masking and resignation, relates with a strengthened resolve that my life, and by extension, life in general, is even more beautiful and complicated than what may appear.

Quite often throughout this summer of action, protest, awakening and civil unrest, one sentiment that was shared was the idea that silence signifies compliance with oppression. Now, this idea, through Krug, and also through those who have operated from this same place ––– as she’s not the only person who has ever attempted to pull of this type of race re-assignment ––– has proven fallible.

While engaging in her own form of oppression, Jessica A. Krug, was almost always saying and writing all the right words; yet, those words were always undercut, owing to the fact she was never fully-honest with herself.

If however, one is still desiring of a quick quote, pulled from a dense text or speech, which may or may not be taken out of context, this one –––– from a source unknown –––– may be of use: “Don’t just talk about it, be about it.”