Satchuel Cole, a prominent Black Lives Matter in Indiana, has apologized for misleading people after it was revealed that Cole was white.
“Friends, I need to take accountability for my actions and the harm that I have done. My deception and lies have hurt those I care most about. I have taken up space as a Black person while knowing I am white.” Cole posted on Facebook. “I have used Blackness when it was not mine to use. I have asked for support and energy as a Black person. I have caused harm to the city, friends and the work that I held so dear.”
Cole was born Jennifer Benton but applied for a name change to Satchuel Paigelyn Cole in 2010, according to the Indianapolis Star. Cole uses “they/them” pronouns and was active in local Black Lives Matter groups and the Indianapolis gay and lesbian community.
Cole told those closest to her that her father was black and posed with a man identified as “Lee Timeless Barnes” for an interview with Freedom Indiana.
Documents obtained by BlackIndyLive.com show that Cole’s parents both identified as white. Cole’s sister, Melissa, killed their mother in 1994.
Cole’s outing is the latest in a string of revelations about white people who pretended to be African American. Jessica Krug, a professor of African studies at George Washington University, admitted that she was white after claiming she was black.
“To an escalating degree over my adult life, I have eschewed my lived experience as a white Jewish child in suburban Kansas City under various assumed identities within a Blackness that I had no right to claim: first North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness,” Krug wrote on Medium. “I have built my life on a violent anti-Black lie, and I have lied in every breath I have taken.”
A teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin, C.V. Vitolo-Haddad, resigned from the university after Vitolo-Haddad “let people make assumptions” about her own race.
