U. of Wisconsin Grad Student Lied About Being Black, Resigns from Teaching Position

A graduate student at the University of Wisconsin recently announced that she has lied about her race. Graduate student CV Vitolo-Haddad, who is actually Sicilian, wrote in a blog post this week that she has pretended to be black for some time. At one point, Vitolo-Haddad also told her peers that she identified as Latino. She has resigned from her position as a teaching assistant

According to a report by the New York Post, University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student CV Vitolo-Haddad admitted recently that she had lied about being black and Latino. Vitolo-Haddad is just one of several progressive activists that have falsely claimed to be black in the past several years.

“When asked if I identify as Black, my answer should have always been ‘No.’ There were three separate instances I said otherwise. I should not have adopted any identity outside of what I know,” Vitolo-Haddad wrote in a Medium post. “I should have recognized my commitments to liberation can be based on my experiences without incorporating those experiences into my identity. I should have instead been clear and honest about how I identify and talked through people’s perceptions and ideas of me.”

In the blog post, Vitolo-Haddad admitted that she is actually Sicilian. She claims that she was inspired to claim a minority identity after hearing conflicting claims about her racial heritage from her parents.

“What I know is that I am Southern Italian/Sicilian. In trying to make sense of my experiences with race, I grossly misstepped. I went along with however people saw me,” she wrote” I over-identified with unreliable and unproven family history and latched onto anything I remembered growing up. All of those actions were deeply misguided and have caused an incredible amount of hurt for the Madison community, those I organize with, and everyone who has been exposed to this public reckoning. It was my choice and error to identify any differently.”

Vitolo-Haddad has resigned from her position as a teaching assistant. She has also stepped down as the co-president of the UW chapter of the Teaching Assistants’ Association.

Vitolo-Haddad was criticized by commenters over her failure to directly admit that she is “white” in the blog post. One commenter even claimed that Vitolo-Haddad had previously invalidated the perspectives of others on the basis of their “white privilege.”

It is amazing to me that even in this second statement you cannot bring yourself to just say “I am white.” You constantly used “white” as a way to shut down committed organizers you disliked or resented, assassinating their character as a way to avoid constructive political debate. You accused whole left organizations of being too white to participate in coalition work (and these are orgs with ACTUAL POC members that you conveniently and stubbornly ignored for your political purposes)…Anytime a white person disagreed with you on a political point however reasonably, you would point out that since they were white they had no place having an opinion, and act self righteous and injured.

Breitbart News reported at the beginning of the month that George Washington University Professor Jessica Krug admitted that she had also lied about being black. In reality, Krug is a white woman from Kansas City, Missouri.