Hey friends. As you may have noticed, I’m a white Jewish curly-haired woman who urgently wants to be part of the racial justice movement. So is Jessica Krug, formerly known as Jess La Bombera, which was a completely false AfroLatina persona she invented to steal unearned trust and resources from the people she purported to fight for.

It’s the part about stealing trust that keeps tugging at me. Because if I’m being honest, I can imagine an alternate-universe me who would be tempted to do that too.

I think it’s important to examine that. Not to excuse her with sympathetic explanations. It’s an opportunity to ask myself what I can learn from this Good Ally Gone Bad story, instead of just dismissing her as a wacko white lady. Kinda like we need to see what white male shooters are telling us about our society instead of just dismissing them as “lone wolves.” And as usual, I’m sharing what I see in myself in the hope that it may be useful to you for whatever shifts you’re trying to make in yourself and the world around you.

Jessica Krug’s theft of credibility is resonating with me extra hard because: lately I’ve been noticing my own hurt and sadness at being distrusted by a group of people of color with whom I’m trying to build a collaborative relationship. I try so hard! I care so much! I’ve sacrificed! And I keep getting the side eye, confrontational questions about my motivation, passive resistance. IT’S SO UNFAIR, says me to myself. WHY WON’T THEY TRUST ME.

Well, you’ve probably heard of Peggy McIntosh’s “Invisible Knapsack” of privilege? (if not, google it, I’ll wait) The image I keep getting as I reflect on myself and Jessica Krug is not a knapsack but a jetpack. Every step I take on this racial justice journey, I am wearing this jetpack on my back. And every Black person, Indigenous person, and person of color that I meet sees it on me and knows: I can GTFO of this struggle at any moment. Thumb on the button, fire up the rockets — probably injuring folx around me with my sudden burst of flame — and zoom up up and away, blending into the clouds of whiteness waiting to surround me. I can do that. They know it. I may forget it, but they can’t afford to.

So, I have a choice.

1) I can accept that I won’t be fully accepted, as desperately as I want to be. I can spend every day of every year earning trust bit by bit, even knowing it’ll only ever be up to a certain point. I can learn to see that our white supremacy culture and history are to blame for the fact I’ll never be fully trusted or trustworthy, rather than getting offended at folx who have the temerity to act like they see my jetpack.

Or 2) I can insist so hard on my right to be trusted that I become utterly untrustworthy. Some people do that openly, getting up in our fragile feelz and showing our tears and anger, taking our privilege that could be put to work for the movement and stomping off with it like we’re entitled to keep it for ourselves. And some people, like Jessica Krug and Rachel Dolezal, do it secretly. For awhile. They decide that they can be the ones to decide they’re trustworthy. They take the shortcut of claiming an identity, literal skin in the game, that they have zero right to. And yes, that’s white supremacy at work in their minds, whispering that they are better qualified to judge their commitment than people who’ve lived the experiences they are faking.

Maybe that’s not what the Krugs and the Dolezals think. But if that’s what comes to mind for me when I read their stories, what does that say about me?

It says, I too am someone who wants you to believe I’ll never use my jetpack. But at least I’m someone who knows I can’t make that promise. And that you’d be right not to trust my promise anyway.

Ultimately, it’s not about whether you trust me, it’s about whether I trust you. To see me when I keep putting one foot in front of the other. To see me when I do inevitably fly away in the face of something I could stand against, because I’m not perfect. To see if I come back, and then make your own decisions about keeping on walking with me.

Hope this helps. Hope we’ll see each other on the journey.