We should all be free to invent our ethnic identity, choosing whichever one fits best with our fantasies about ourselves.

The American race police are pushing us towards a near future when new acquaintances will be able to scan the ancestry data chip beneath our skin. To 'check our chromosome' as it were.

Can anyone really say such a future is one more loyal to 'the truth' than the world Jessica Krug inhabits? From what I can see Krug's scholarly research on ethnogenesis in the Caribbean among the African diaspora is directly connected to her own 'personal ethnogenesis'.

She knows from her own work how *constructive* ethnic identity formation is and always has been. She lived her own scholarship. She deserves prizes and acclaim for her dedication, not ostracism.

Know why the Germans are called "Allemands" in French? It's etymologically connected to "alle Männer", i.e., "all men". In antiquity "the Germans" were a loose confederation of "men," i.e., soldiers.

German ethnic identity started as *elective confederacy*. Now, 21st-century American professoriate is at least as tight-knit a confederation as any ancient army. It makes *perfect sense* that members of it would start to converge on the same ethnic identity, & that they would...

... naturally default to the one(s) that are locally most valued. Anyone who has been in an American history dept in the last 20 years will know that it would make more sense to gravitate there towards an Afro-Caribbean identity, not, say, a Welsh one.

So, to end this thread, #JessicaKrug did nothing wrong, other than to cave to the Maoist thugs who are currently rubbing her face in it and pretending that's reeducation.

PS See Herwig Wolfram's History of the Goths (1979) for more on German ethnogenesis in antiquity.