Another scholar outed for pretending to be black

The anonymous author of the Medium post says that Vitolo-Haddad is from a white, affluent Italian American family that lives in Florida. Haddad, according to the post, is a name Vitolo-Haddad kept from their past marriage. The author -- described only as an affiliate of Madison -- notes that Krug also described herself as having different nonwhite backgrounds, including North African and Afro-Latinx.

"Though their claim to a POC identity was vague, the one consistency was their insistence that they were a constant target of acts of racism and that they came from some kind of nonwhite background," the anonymous author wrote, accusing Vitolo-Haddad of changing their appearance over time to appear nonwhite. "They referenced it frequently on social media and in interpersonal conversations. Their behavior was reminiscent of the way people who knew Krug have described her: perpetually in a victim status, but also perpetually shifting in terms of the specifics. Their stories lacked coherence, but they intimated an insider status that made (and makes) people hesitant to question them."

Vitolo-Haddad’s initial apology said that they were stepping down from all positions of organizational power at Madison, including their co-presidency of the Teaching Assistants’ Association and their teaching position.

Vitolo-Haddad did not agree to an interview request. Asked via email whether they would remain at Madison as a student only, with no teaching responsibilities, they said, “Those I harmed will be the ones to determine the consequences.”

The now former George Washington professor, Krug, has blamed her actions on past trauma and mental health issues. She may have benefited from her mimicry academically, though, and her critics are demanding a full accounting of that. At Portland State University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree, for instance, she was part of the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program. The program is for underrepresented students, including first-generation and low-income, but also minority students.

Krug, who did not respond to an interview request, is from a white Jewish family and went to a private preparatory school near Kansas City, Mo. A former classmate of hers there, Quinton Lucas -- now the mayor of Kansas City, Mo. -- recently retweeted a yearbook photo of them together, writing, “One of the stranger person-in-your-yearbook-photo-did-this stories I’ve stumbled upon. Yes, Jessica graduated a few years ahead of me. She was interesting back then, but it is really surprising she’s tried to pass as Black for 20 years. Her apology in reflection is warranted.”

More Questions Than Answers

What about Vitolo-Haddad? They said Wednesday via email that while they benefited “socially” in certain ways from the situation, they never applied for scholarships, fellowships or awards for people of color or identified as Black on any forms asking about their identification. They also said they’d never represented themself as Black in their published scholarship, which includes work on the rhetorical strategies of far-right groups.

Vitolo-Haddad directed further questions to the second apology post, which says there were “three separate instances,” otherwise unspecified, when they were asked if they were Black but did not say no. They apologized for entering Black organizing spaces and for “failing to correct varied misconceptions about my identity over the years, and for everything I did to aid or advance those ideas.”

In particular, they said, “I want to apologize for ever taking lies about Cuban roots at face value,” though it’s unclear to what they are referring. “Additionally, I want to apologize for how my failure to own up to these harmful decisions publicly made every conversation on social media about the varied ways I’ve been racialized a source of confusion and deception.”

Meredith Mcglone, spokesperson for Madison, said that the university “expects that people represent themselves authentically and accurately in all aspects of their academic work.” She confirmed that Vitolo-Haddad is “not currently employed as a teaching assistant.”

Regarding Krug's degree status, Mcglone said, "We have policies in place to investigate and address misconduct." Federal student privacy law limits what the university is able to share about current and former students without their consent, she added.

Conversations about Krug have resurrected other stories about faking racial identities in the academy.

Andrea Smith, professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside, has long faced accusations that she is not really Native American, but she said in 2015 that she identifies as Cherokee even if she isn’t enrolled in the Cherokee Nation. That same year, Rachel Dolezal, former Spokane, Wash., NAACP chairperson and an adjunct instructor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University, was outed as being white. Dolezal later wrote a memoir about how she still identified as Black. That wasn’t always the case, though; in 2002, Dolezal unsuccessfully sued Howard University for allegedly discriminating against her as a white master of fine arts student there.

In 2018, Senator Elizabeth Warren shared genetic test results showing that she is in fact part Native American while simultaneously insisting that she's always been evaluated professionally, as a professor of a law, as a white person.

More recently, the family of the late Cuban writer H. G. Carrillo, who died of COVID-19, said he was not actually Cuban at all, but rather born to a non-Latinx Black family in Detroit. In a connection to the Krug case, Carrillo was an assistant professor of English at George Washington.

Actress Mindy Kaling’s brother, Vijay Chokal-Ingam, has written about why he faked being Black to get into medical school, which he eventually dropped out of. Chokal-Ingam says he benefited from affirmative action in admissions decisions but, to his surprise, faced discrimination in other areas of his life while he faked being Black.

Krug’s departmental colleagues called for her resignation or ouster. She had already ceased teaching prior to her resignation.

Vitolo-Haddad in the second confession post said, "What I know now is that perception is not reality. Race is not flat, it is a social construct rife with contradictions. Fighting racism never required dissociating myself from whiteness. In fact, it derailed the cause by centering my experience."

While "most of the trust I destroyed cannot be rebuilt," they said, they seek "redress that is appropriate for each individual I’ve harmed.” This will be a “long-term and ongoing process, prioritizing those most directly impacted. I won’t pretend to know what that looks like, but I am committed to being part of it until the end.”

Everyone is fucking crazy as fuck.

[quote] In 2018, Senator Elizabeth Warren shared genetic test results showing that she is in fact part Native American

Lol, they draw her into it.

I think it is odd that no one has discussed DNA testing’s failure with respect to American Indian ancestry. Tribal nations don’t accept DNA as a potential qualifier for admission because DNA is not a reliable test for native ancestry. The reference pool is too small. I tested my ancestry early when these tests became available, and the breakdowns have changes significantly several times because the more people take the tests, the greater the references to compare with and the more precise the results are. At first I was surprised I was only like 13 percent Irish. That didn’t comport with family history. Then I was around 25 percent, and now Ancestry says 36 percent, and it also identifies four specific areas, all within County Mayo, that my family came from. We went to County Mayo last spring and met a cousin of my mother who was born there—exactly where the map indicates. But there’s a very large Irish American population who have taken the DNA tests and tribal nations are miniscule by comparison, so the testing is not precise at all.

“The reference population is built on DNA that is voluntarily submitted to the DTC ancestry companies. Both Hull and Walajahi express concern regarding how the DTC ancestry companies are including Native American heritage in their algorithm, despite limited data. They said that many Native Americans are reluctant to participate because of a history of genetic research undermining their trust.”

Warren was really misguided in taking the test at all.

Of she uses “they” as her personal pronoun

I applied for a job at Georgetown University about 15 years ago, and a few weeks after I applied, I got a letter in the mail telling me that I am being considered for the position and that I need to check off two boxes on the enclosed slip and return it. One box asked my ethnicity and the other one asked my sex. I jokingly asked my roommate if I could get away with adding a box that says GAY. She was from West Africa and she told me I should check the “African American” box. I told her that was crazy. She said they’ll never ask me face to face if I am called in for an interview—that would be illegal—and that I will never get an interview if I tell them I am a white male. I answered honestly and was not called in for an interview. Which is just as well. I know someone who works at Georgetown now and her life is hell. Her office building was literally condemned; it had rats scurrying around it but ultimately a whistleblower employee threatened to call a local news station and the university had the building fumigated and inspected, and it was determined to be structurally unsound and in danger of imminent collapse. Despite a $1.66 billion endowment, they apparently underpay staff and neglect any non-student needs, so I feel bad for whatever minority benefited from their advancement program.

This hasn't been proven. OP is posting shit from far Reich web sites. F&F

R8 Inside Higher Ed is one of two leading academic news outlets. The other is the Chronicle of Higher Education. There’s nothing “far right” (or “reich”) about Inside Higher Ed, although it is the ‘gossip rag’ of the higher education sector.

I think R8 was being sarcastic.

They're all just crazy white people. All the identitarian anti-racist assholes are just crazy white people.

So she's transracial AND transgender? Damn. Bitch got game. Why didn't I think of that first?

Heterosexual white women are a dime a dozen in academia. Unless it’s a discipline like nuclear physics or theoretical mathematics, there are simply too many of them to be candidates for affirmative action. Not surprised at all that it’s the unethical members of this group who are the ones falsely claiming minority status.

White, politically correct, leftist academics throwing stones at people in the real world who dare to disagree with their extreme, leftist theories on race. Color me surprised that a few of these nutters decide to inhabit the very cocoons of victimhood that they’ve constructed for POC in our society. This is what happens when society promotes and celebrates certain groups as perpetual victims. You get loons who wish to become a part of the victim caste to be praised and coddled by society for being perpetually aggrieved.

There is no defense for this cunt. Lying by omission is still lying, it doesn’t matter if she said nothing while letting others believe that she’s Cuban-Ethiopisn-Italian or whatever the fuck she faked.

I had planned to masquerade as a black man. But, I have a job and my dick is too small.

Geez, how many are there?

I don’t see the problem.

The other scam is using the pronoun they. . We have a new kind of crazy in academia now.

She should have already resigned for being exhausting.

The problem is when these places are trying to fill a diversity quota over qualified applicants. When I was looking for work, I started off checking the "White" box. I never got called in for an interview. After a while, I tried checking off the "Hispanic" option. Suddenly I start getting interviews. I have a German last name, so when asked about it, and they were sly but they did, I just said I came to the US as a child and was from Argentina. So now my employers and co-workers think I am "Hispanic". Thankfully my mother's side are from the Caucasus so I look vaguely ethnic enough for people not to question my fake back story. This lady should have just pretended to be Hispanic over Black. You dont get as many victim points, but you still get a leg up over your fellow Whites, and its easier to pass. On the plus side, I ended up learning a lot about Argentina.

Anyone who referes to themselves as "they" needs to be canceled immediately.

I’ve never met a they person.

How does the whole ‘they’ thing work, anyway? Does he or she explain upon introductions that he or she requires extra special boutique pronouns, or do they wait for you to say something and then correct you?

R22, neither have I. But from my understanding, the first words out of their mouths after introducing themselves is to announce they require extra special boutique pronouns. And they are *very* quick to correct you if you dare step out of line.

I'm just going by secondhand accounts, though it does sound about right.

This has got to be part of a mental illness, huh? Like dissociative identity disorder and OCD and body dysmorphia.

Really fucking offensive that these pasty ass middle class affluent white bitches who already have everything have taken job opportunities from actual black and brown people who could have benefited from that. But fuck me, that's the story of America. I hate this country.

R22 I have a relative who's a they person. The secret to being they is recruiting allies who act as watchdogs for your pronouns (since grammatically, people don't use gendered pronouns when speaking to you to your face.) Her mother and a few younger female relatives are the pronoun police and make a big show of correctly gendering her at all possible moments, regardless of how inappropriate.

Me? I think she's a lesbian. She's in her 30s.

R25 she's a woman/ a she. No amount of self deception is gonna change genetics.

^ and yes, definitely a lesbian in denial

Transgender and transracial? Pfft, that's nothing. Try being a transgender, transracial "cyborg".

Yes, R24 there is nowhere worse than the USA when it comes to racism. That’s one of the reasons our citizens are so desperate to leave. *If only* we could entice people from other countries to become US citizens...

R28, throw it in a grease fire

White passing for black. Blacks passing for white. Gay passing for straight.

And here’s another one! This person also uses they/them pronouns. How surprising.

It’s like watching a game of whack a mole at this point.

Shaun King is next.

I worked with a they person. Nobody said to use they but it was impossible to determine their gender by name or meeting them in person. So everyone just used they to make life easier. No idea still today what gender "they" were.

Updating this thread to include Alec Baldwin's wife.

I love you R12.

[quote] Everyone is fucking crazy as fuck.

No kidding.