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The extremely apt comparisons to Rachel Dolezal—both seemed to think that a not-that-convincing hairdo and a nose ring were sufficient props in their quest to perform Blackness—practically write themselves. But Krug and Dolezal are not the only people who have chosen to cloak themselves in the mantle of an oppressed identity in a seeming bid for authenticity—the reveal of these kinds of stories is by now a semi-annual event.
Krug is not even the only professor this year from George Washington University who lied about their racial and ethnic identity: In May, it was revealed that the recently deceased and supposedly Afro-Cuban writer Hermán G. “Hache” Carrillo, a creative writing professor at GWU who wrote the 2004 noveland claimed to be from Cuba, was in fact not a Latinx immigrant at all, but a Black American from Detroit, born Herman Glenn Carroll.
Carrillo is a bit of an anomaly, of course—most writers and academics who claim the mantle of an oppressed identity, typically Black or Native American, are white—but the motivations perhaps overlap, even if they hit differently.
The want our rhythm but not our blues.
You forgot Jeanie Cummings the Author of “American Dirt”. She wrote an article for the NYT saying she was white. But once she wrote her Border-Porn story she claimed to be Puerto Rician.
Would have been great to include Shaun King in this article. I have such a hard time understanding why his lily-white ass always gets a pass while others get dragged. He is such a race grifter.