Edit (9/7/2020): After a dizzying array of responses and pressure for transparency from their community, CV has confirmed that they are Italian, with a possible, but unconfirmed, distant ancestor who is Ethiopian. One of their family members commented on the now-defunct Facebook status that no one in the family identifies as Black. You can find CV’s apology here.
When the Jessica A. Krug story came out yesterday I was shocked, but not by the extent of her deception. What caught my attention, instead, were the parallels between her story and that of someone I know. I have long suspected CV Vitolo, a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, of engaging in the same kind of race-shifting and copious lying that now has people enraged with Krug (and which distracts from the important work and struggles of actual Black thinkers, both in and outside of the academy). I share this information with the hope that it might prevent CV from causing the same harm and violence Krug enacted on people who trusted her.
For years, I have doubted my intuition, questioned whether anyone would believe me, and rationalized that CV might, despite all of the inconsistencies in their story, somehow be telling the truth. Race, after all, is slippery and racialization is not just about what is immediately visible, a fact I now believe CV has taken advantage of as they slide themselves further into spaces of Black identity and political organizing that do not belong to them.
Another reason I have hesitated to expose CV is because they are adept at weaving new information into their ever-expanding web of explanations. Just yesterday, they tweeted about the Krug controversy by alluding to themselves as a racially ambiguous, light-skinned Black person through liberal use of the first person plural:
From across the screen and in person, I have watched them cultivate this identity over multiple years, adding and shedding details as suits their sense of credibility. But, when I first met CV, they were telling a much different story. Like Krug, they have moved through a series of narratives about themselves and claims to distinct geographical heritages, all while distancing themselves from their upbringing in a wealthy Italian family in Florida.
One final reason I have hesitated to share my suspicions is due to CV’s public performance of an anti-fascist politic and their abundant critiques of racism in leftist organizing. I do not wish to give fodder to people who have other grievances with CV, or with Black studies and Black liberation struggles. I’m sharing this, instead, because the outpouring of pain in the wake of Krug’s betrayal has reminded me that, as a non-Black person who inhabits some of the other identities CV has appropriated, I owe others this warning. I owe it to share with Black scholars and organizers, because they deserve a chance to avoid placing their trust in people who are committed enough to Black struggle to appropriate a Black identity that gains them social capital, but not committed enough to just exist in solidarity without centering themselves.
Above all, I feel that the people and communities — especially those in Madison — who have believed in, supported, and uplifted CV have a right to be informed. They have a right to make decisions about whether or not to trust this person, about whether or not to be vulnerable with them, about whether or not to allow them into sacred spaces. This is especially the case given that CV is not only an academic capitalizing on the performance of Blackness in their research; they also deploy their identity to gain access to and credibility in the ever-growing movements for Black power and justice in Wisconsin.
Below is the evidence of their deceit that I have collected over the past several years, with as much detail as I can provide, including dates where I can remember them. As a person who shares community, both academic and geographical, with CV, I have chosen to remain anonymous due to my own vulnerability and out of concern that this will devolve into an interpersonal conflict or make me a target of their response. I hope, nonetheless, that I have provided enough information for others to come to their own conclusions.
I first met CV around four years ago, when they joined the Department of Communication Arts at UW Madison where I, as an affiliate of the university, had many friends. They were quick to call themselves a “person of color,” intimating that perhaps we even shared some heritage. Beyond that, things were vague. My instincts told me that something was off, so I probed the graduate student whisper network: I heard from a friend that they claimed to have an Afro-Latinx grandparent. Another friend said they told her they were Asian. Still others assumed that CV was Arab due to the last name Haddad, which actually comes from a previous marriage. While CV was careful to avoid direct claims beyond the generic POC label, their social media presence heavily implied that they were Latinx:
Otherwise, CV outright refused to explicitly state their racial self-identification, even when asked in good faith by people seeking community with them. From what I have heard from other graduate students in their department, people were afraid to ask them for more detail, lest they be a accused of the racism CV purported to experience so often. Occasionally CV mentioned their own ambiguity on the question, and, in response to white supremacists, even implied that the inconsistency of their answers was an anti-racist practice:
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. 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.
For example, in an overblown performance of being POC, they brought sage to class to cleanse the space of whiteness. They also made myriad references to the harm colonization had exacted on their family.
They regularly criticized people for getting their name wrong:
For more context, though they go by Civi, the name comes from the initials of their legal first and middle names: CV. Haddad, the only “non-Western” part of their name, is appropriated from a previous marriage.
Meanwhile, in an eerie parallel to the Krug case, they have shirked any (potentially Afro) Latinx identity over the past year and begun claiming North African Blackness. I was puzzled when I saw someone on Twitter refer to them as a Black trans person. Then, this fall, I heard a rumor from fellow Madison community members that they had claimed to be Ethiopian, which they confirmed on Twitter:
Even more recently, they have taken to calling themselves ambiguous (as in the first image in this post) and “lightskin” in an obvious reference to Blackness:
The boldness with which they have begun claiming Blackness — as well as all of the rest of the above behavior — has been accompanied by marked shifts in their appearance. They currently post photos, like those below, that have garnered them comparisons to Zendaya, Indya Moore, and “Hispanic girls with brown eyes that like to cop an attitude”:
A cursory Google search and some old Facebook photos, however, reveal that they grew up looking like this:
Given those photos, their Snapchat bitmoji and their myriad claims of experiencing overt racism based on their appearance (including that someone compared them to Candace Owens and other assertions of being called an “angry Black woman”) are puzzling:
A slightly more invested Google search — prompted by my unease at the traction this person is gaining as a trusted (and I’m sure, in many people’s minds, Black) leader in the Madison community — reveals that they grew up in a purely Italian family. Though I feel it would be invasive to post images of their family members given that they have not chosen to be part of CV’s racial performance, publicly available obituaries indicate that all four of their grandparents (the same grandparents they claimed to be part of an “anticolonial struggle”) are white Italians. Their mother (the same mother whose accent they allegedly mocked) grew up in New York.
Moreover, despite criticisms I have heard them make of middle class organizers, they grew up in a 1.5 million dollar home in Florida with a property developer father, went to an expensive private high school, and, according to old Facebook comments from a family member of theirs, lived an economically privileged life:
Race, to reiterate, is not only about what is visible. But, judging by what I have witnessed, CV is claiming a particular kind of racialized experience and oppression that they have no right to.
After compiling all of this information, I feel more certain in my instinctive reaction that something is not right about the narrative CV puts forth. I believe that they are on the path paved by people like Krug, people who take whiteness to its most extreme, extracting from and capitalizing off of the very few experiences and spaces that do not already belong to them. I hope this writing encourages them not to go down it.
I made this post for the primary purpose of informing Black communities about CV’s behavior, so that they may make their own decisions about self-protection and whom to allow in their spaces. Frankly, I agree with those who have stated that the disproportionate attention given to white people who commit race fraud pulls focus and energy from the much more important, urgent work, in both scholarship and political organizing, that actual Black folks are doing. For that reason, I hope that all of this can be quickly clarified and moved past.
At the same time, I am left with more questions than answers: If I am somehow wrong in my conclusions and this is, say, a case of belated identity discovery and/or passing, why the inconsistencies around Latinx versus North African identity? Why the other untruths about their background? If CV is as committed to the politics of Black liberation as they so often proclaim, how does this performance fit in? Why could they not commit to Black liberation without making themselves the focal point of it? How do they have the audacity to chastise others about anti-Blackness? Most crucially, how on earth are they bold enough, at the very time I am writing this, to participate in online discussions criticizing Krug? How do they plan to be accountable to the hurt and betrayal they may have already caused with their behavior?
CV, I believe you owe your communities a response.
