Family,

I am in a state of complete and utter shock and sadness. Jess La Bombera, an activist who I often deferred to and stepped aside and gave the mic to on this platform, just revealed that she is a white woman who has been pretending to be Black.

I'm dazed and still processing my emotions, but mostly, I feel betrayed, foolish and, in many ways, gaslit. https://medium.com/@jessakrug/the-truth-and-the-anti-black-violence-of-my-lies-9a9621401f85

What is with this, Black fam?

Non-Black people putting on a little darker foundation or getting a tan, and wet curling/braiding their hair, walking/talking with a little swag, and then claiming to be biracial/light-skinned Black?

Like, what the fuck?

Remember when I was like, "Nah y'all. We can't be policing Blackness. I don't want to be the Blackness police."

And y'all were like, "Nah, Robert. We GOTTA be the Blackness police"?

Y'all was right.

For these people, it's not enough to conquer Blackness; they have to own it, imitate it, embody it, and consume it. Colonizers. Parasites. Dopplegangers. Cannibals.

This situation makes me feel like the deception is intentional. These white people posing as Black are chaos agents who are attempting to disrupt movements for Black liberation. When discovered, they use ableism to hide behind mental health and trauma excuses.

According to Hari Ziyad, her confession comes just before she was about to be exposed: https://www.facebook.com/hziyad/posts/10158983390996934

Defer to dark-skinned Black women on this. And do not let WWTs cause you to cop pleas for her.