JESSICA A Krug fooled the world when she pretended to be black during her entire career teaching African history.

But why did she do it and what has she said about her false identity?

Who is Jessica A Krug?

Jessica A Krug, 38, grew up in suburban Kansas City to a Jewish family.

She is a white professor who has taught African history at George Washington University since 2012.

She has also written extensively about Africa, Latin America, the diaspora and identity.

In a bombshell blog post on September 3, she revealed that she has pretended to be black during her entire teaching career.

"For the better part of my adult life, every move I’ve made, every relationship I’ve formed, has been rooted in the napalm toxic soil of lies," she explained.

"… 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 …

"I have … claimed these identities as my own when I had absolutely no right to do so — when doing so is the very epitome of violence, of thievery and appropriation, of the myriad ways in which non-Black people continue to use and abuse Black identities and cultures.

"People have fought together with me and have fought for me, and my continued appropriation of a Black Caribbean identity is not only, in the starkest terms, wrong — unethical, immoral, anti-Black, colonial — but it means that every step I’ve taken has gaslighted those whom I love."

Why did she lie about being black?

Krug attributes her longstanding lies to her "mental health demons" and "cowardice".

She says her false identity was borne out of isolation and loneliness.

She explains: "I clearly have been battling some unaddressed mental health demons for my entire life.

"Mental health issues likely explain why I assumed a false identity initially, as a youth, and why I continued and developed it for so long".

The professor believes her lying is a "common response" to "the severe trauma that marked my early childhood and teen years".

However, Krug says her mental welfare does not condone nor excuse what she did.

Who is Rachel Dolezal?

Krug's admission comes years after former college instructor Rachel Dolezal was outed for claiming to be black, when she is a white American.

Dolezal pretended to be black for 10 years and shocked the world when she identified as “transracial”.

The ruse worked for years until 2015, when her parents, with whom she has long feuded, told reporters that their daughter was born white but was presenting herself as a black activist in the Spokane region.

The story became an international sensation, and she was fired as head of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and kicked off a police ombudsman commission.

She also lost her job teaching African studies at Eastern Washington University.

Dolezal legally changed her name to Nkechi Diallo in 2016.

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