BLM activist from Indiana admits to posing as black person, vows to ‘seek help’
Another “black” activist has admitted to being a white person.
Satchuel Cole, a community organizer for Black Lives Matter in Indiana, fessed up to the years-long ruse in a Facebook post last week — and vowed to “seek help.”
“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. 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,” said Cole, 45, who was born a woman but identifies as non-binary.
“I am sorry for the harm I have caused. I am sorry for the hurt and betrayal. I will do what I can to show that I want to be a better person,” she wrote.
The mea culpa comes after an exposé published by BlackIndyLive, which ran yearbook photos of Cole’s white parents, and produced documents showing Cole once listed her race as “white.”
The outlet also revealed Cole’s birth name — Jennifer Benton — and reported that Cole’s parents listed their races as “white” in legal documents.
Cole’s name legally changed in 2010, according to the outlet. Around that time, Cole’s profile as an activist began to take off.
In 2017, Cole was appointed vice-president of a well-known, but now defunct, equal-rights organization, Don’t Sleep, and was also named spokesperson for the family of Aaron Bailey, who was shot and killed by Indianapolis police during a traffic stop.
Cole, who also works as an apartment manager, is the latest among a string of white women who pretended to be black.
Earlier this week, a grad student at the University of Wisconsin Madison, stepped down from her teaching position amid revelations she falsely posed as black and Latino. CV Vitolo-Haddad admitted in a Medium post she’s actually Southern Italian and Sicilian.
Jessica Krug, a George Washington University African American studies professor, confessed her whiteness last month after years of posing as a black woman. She too publicly apologized.
In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white woman from Washington state who rose the ranks of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was forced to step down when her parents blew her cover.
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