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 do want to say, though, that the feeling of deception, here, is so recognizable to me because of Andrea Smith (who is still publishing books with Duke UP on Indigenous issues, BTW) and Elizabeth Warren, and so so many others.
And because of how my own ancestors will only ever exist as a memory imagined. And because of the effects of white supremacy and settler colonialism for me, as an Indigenous person (and as the child of an adoptee).
And because those memories are the only tenuous link, the threadbare strand of connection, that I have to a sense of self that seems ever on the brink of being accused of "false," "invented," or "appropriated".
The feeling of devastation and of loss erupts all over again in moments like this. I haven't even begun to process, until now, but damn this is hard. And in the midst of it all.
She wrote: “My ancestors, unknown, unnamed, who bled life into a future they had no reason to believe could or should exist. (...) Those whose names I cannot say for their own safety, whether in my barrio, in Angola, or in Brazil.”
