{"id":269381,"date":"2020-09-21T03:14:42","date_gmt":"2020-09-21T07:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=269381"},"modified":"2020-09-21T03:14:42","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T07:14:42","slug":"white-profs-admission-she-posed-as-black-raises-hard-questions-about-race-and-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/09\/21\/white-profs-admission-she-posed-as-black-raises-hard-questions-about-race-and-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"White prof\u2019s admission she posed as Black raises hard questions about race and identity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On the very morning that Krug\u2019s confessional appeared, the confidante she called for solace publicly denounced her. Her university relieved her of teaching duties and opened an investigation. The public called her mentally unstable. Her colleagues in the history department at George Washington University openly admonished her to give up tenure and go. (File Photo: Melanie Wasser\/Unsplash)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After Jessica Anne Krug posted an apologia for passing as Black<\/a>, the public furor was immediate. Krug was born and reared as a white Jewish female in the suburbs of Kansas City.<\/p>\n

On the very morning that Krug\u2019s confessional appeared, the confidante she called for solace publicly denounced her<\/a>. Her university relieved her of teaching duties and opened an investigation<\/a>. The public called her mentally unstable. Her colleagues in the history department at George Washington University openly admonished her to give up tenure and go<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Karma Feinstein Cohen \u2014 another white American Jewish woman \u2014 urged Krug to come to Israel, where Krug could learn to develop who she \u201cauthentically\u201d is \u201cby developing [her] personal Jewish identity<\/a>.\u201d Reserving comment on the prudence of Cohen\u2019s offer, we might note that besides asking Krug to accept personal responsibility, Cohen is asking Krug do some personal learning and growth about identity.<\/p>\n

As a Black man and a scholar of neo-passing \u2014 acts and stories of passing that occur after legalized segregation, especially in our contemporary context \u2014 I believe we could benefit from the same. As a query, we might ask: What can we learn from this painful tale?<\/p>\n

The persistence of passing<\/h2>\n

On July 17, 1952, the African American weekly Jet Magazine<\/em><\/a> featured the article \u201cWhy \u2018Passing\u2019 Is Passing Out<\/a>.\u201d The article reported that increased economic opportunities for Blacks, the nascent civil rights movement and growing racial esteem made passing less attractive and less necessary for Blacks.<\/p>\n

While there is some recorded history of whites passing as Black<\/a>, as historian Daniel Sharfstein details in the New York Times<\/em>, and while there are fictional accounts, as analyzed by English professor Baz Dresinger in Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture<\/em><\/a>, this type of passing is not well-known or understood.Of course, Jet<\/em>\u2019s prediction was more hope than fact \u2014 as English professor Mollie Godfrey and I write in the introduction to our book, Neo-Passing: Performing Identity After Jim Crow<\/a><\/em> \u2014 because passing has proliferated post-civil rights. We note some 21st-century examples that brought us to our study: a white author uses an Asian pen name<\/a>; heterosexuals live \u201cout\u201d as gay<\/a> and, irony of ironies, whites try to pass as Black<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We may point to other modern examples of white people passing for Black, such as Rachel Dolezal<\/a>, but we do not have clear theories about why they do it. The need to escape racism and social ills does not appear to be an exigency for white-to-Black passing as it does for Black-to-white. Nor is the more mundane narrative logic presented in the 1986 movie Soul Man<\/em>, where a white male college graduate passes for Black in order to get into law school through affirmative action policies.<\/p>\n

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\nRead more:
\nRachel Dolezal: why ignoring the painful past of “passing” is indefensible<\/a>
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So why does passing persist? And why are white people trying to pass for Black?<\/p>\n

A racial phenomenon<\/h2>\n

In 1929, novelist Nella Larsen predicted with the conclusion of her first novel Passing<\/em><\/a> that the controversy of racial passing would plague us for hundreds of years. Claire Kendry, one of the novel\u2019s Black-to-white passing protagonists, leaps through a third-floor apartment window after her white husband busts into a Black party, demanding to know if Claire is a \u201cDamned, dirty n\u2014\u2014.\u201d The party-goers rush downstairs, but Claire\u2019s body is nowhere to be found. Irene Redfield, Claire\u2019s friend and the other central character, faints.<\/p>\n