Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #JessicaKrug
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I put this question, in regard to Jessica Krug, who is Jewish, because it strikes me as being of particular & profound importance.
Really, it's a rhetorical question, because I believe I know the answer, which is that Jews despise their own European race because of the trauma they have suffered over the centuries at the hands of their fellow Europeans, most recently & traumatically those of the Nazis.
#JessicaKrug is clearly a bit of an odd ball, but I've encountered this phenomenon of racial self-denial & self-contempt in many Jewish (& admittedly also many non-Jewish) intellectuals, such as #SamHarris.
I have not commented specifically on this. I wasn't sure exactly how I felt, but then, I realized that #JessicaKrug wrote to her unknown ancestors in the acknowledgments to her latest book, and I just broke down.
That white fuckery, that debasement of the memory of the ancestors that she did not have, is rooted in so much violence and so much privilege that it is utterly astounding. Pathologically astounding.
I do not want to distract or divert attention from the real material harm that she has caused Black and Afrodiasporic friends and colleagues. In particular young Afrolatina and Afrolatinx colleagues whom Krug gaslighted and demeaned, and for her claims to Afro Puerto Ricanness.
I’m a white Jewish American teaching in Ethnic Studies in higher ed. naturally #JessicaKrug got me thinking abt....how self cancellation is privilege afforded to those protected under white supremacy
....How as a field, Jewish Studies has relied on a myth of natural and intuitive likeness between the Jewish and Black American experience as a way to leave unattended white Jewish absorption by the Anglo settler state
...how excavating my own internalized anti Blackness is a unending commitment I will make as a white person and educator of Ethnic Studies ... and I operate w in a system that will reward me whether I’m accountable to this or not
I’ve seen so many apologies on the TL related to the #JessicaKrug from people who excused her behavior because she said she was “from the hood.” Why do so many people think that Black folks from the hood “just don’t know any better?” 1/
That in itself is dehumanizing. As a person who grew up in subsidized housing on the Southside of Chicago, I can say that our communities are worthy of grace AND accountability. Grace, without accountability, breeds abuse of power. 2/
Give people grace, yes, but not too much that you excuse their harmful behavior, that you excuse their abuse of power, that you excuse their abuse of people. If you feel guilty about growing up with financial and social capital, go to therapy and work that out within yourself. 3/
On #academia: Don't believe everything you read on Twitter. It would shock you to know that academic jealousy is a real thing & academics often lie about others in an attempt to block the career of someone they envy. Always ask questions (offline) & draw your own conclusions.
And be mindful that academics know (more than anyone else) how to hide their envy under the guise of "critiques" of one's work. Always ask questions, folks. And go to the source--to the person being accused. Don't believe everything you hear. Gossip is unreliable. The end.
P.s. This has nothing to do w/ #JessicaKrug. She is yesterday's news as far as I am concerned. This has everything to do w/ the shady ways of some academics; the lies they spread & the pain they cause others simply to feel better about themselves. Yet they are still miserable...
If this whole #JessicaKrug's got you spun, please check out this incredible list of Black, woman, non-binary scholars that you should care to see. It's a thread.....
1) @krw18 Kayla Renée Wheeler is a Black American contemporary Islam & Fashion Studies scholar. She's too dope to be missed.
2) @DrYoFiggy Yomaira C. Figueroa's work centres 20th century U.S. Latinx Caribbean, Afro-Latinx and Afro-Hispanic literature & culture. Check out her work.
1. Folk are calling/emailing me about Jessica Krug and the notion of Black womanhood and how it can be usurped by others. Short answer--power. slightly longer answer: commodification and capitalism.
Also add that the academy tends to want to populate itself with an image in its likeness. So if you Black step back if you white you all right. Proximity to white brings with it a type of capital in the academy. Think colorism mix with elitism. and you get Jessica Kurg
Now let's get to the nitty gritty. White women and the ideology of white womanhood and how this ideology depends on the use of Black women, their labor and way of being. Think Ms. Ann
I was gonna be quiet on this whole #JessicaKrug thing but I'm hot! Aight, so, boom, a thread on my "friendship" with her.
Me and Jess met in 2007 as fellows with SSRC under the theme Black Atlantic. When we met I thought she was a white woman. But she went HARD for Black folks. Her identity as a Black woman hadn't begun.
We were friends from about 2007-2010ish. She hung out with me and my now ex-husband and told us her father was Tuareg from N. Africa. My ex, who'd lived and traveled extensively through Africa began asking questions that we never got satisfactory answers for.
Many are asking themselves how #JessicaKrug managed to fool anyone into believing she was Afro Latina. Well, let me tell you: we were both fellows at the Schomburg and I suppose she fooled me. (a thread 🧵)
I mean, I don't feel hurt or betrayed in this moment because the truth is I always knew something was off with her, but I thought the pathologies she displayed were the product of systemic violence, and not of her twisted racial fantasies...
See, not only did she try to "pass" (we need a better term here - masquerade?) as Latina from "El Barrio" but she also told us her parents were addicts and even said that there were overdoses and suicide attempts happening during the fellowship period.
