Janet Levy – Tamara Weitzman, an oncology social worker in Seattle, was called an “insensitive, Canadian white bitch” and a “white kike” at her workplace.
On both occasions she informed her superiors, but no action was taken against her abusers.
Instead, her employer – the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA), since merged with the Fred Hutchison Cancer Center (FHCC) – required Ms. Weitzman to endure “remedial” courses in racial sensitivity and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) at which her experiences with antisemitism were discounted and her political views denounced.
She says the message she got at the courses was that a) though she was Jewish, she “could pass” as white, so she could not have experienced discrimination; and b) she could not understand the history of racial discrimination.
Course moderators disparaged her opinions.
To add insult to injury, in February 2021, she was fired despite five years of service during which she received several favorable performance reviews – one said she was a “wonderful addition to the SCCA social work team” – and a 23% raise.
Reason: her “ethnic sensitivity” and core values did not align with those of the SCCA and her supervisor could not work with her to address these issues.
On January 16, Ms. Weitzman filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington (Seattle division) seeking relief and damages from the SCCA/FHCC and her supervisors there. She was unable to evoke the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment as her employer is not a government entity. Unfortunately, she also missed the 180-day deadline to sue under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
However, she is seeking declaratory relief that her supervisors violated her rights and injunctive relief prohibiting supervisors at the institution from inflicting on other employees what she had to endure. She has also sought minimum compensatory damages of $75,000, punitive damages to be determined at trial, and a reasonable amount in attorney fees and costs.
Ms. Weitzman’s ordeal highlights how the ubiquity of extreme DEI, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and LGBTQ+ ideologies has transformed workplaces into hostile environments, especially for conservatives. Indeed, these theories have permeated all elements of American society – schools, universities, government, NGOs, the media, entertainment. By indoctrination via exposure, younger generations are being trained to focus on the divisions of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, and political viewpoints.
Examples abound, not only of how this divisiveness is being normalized, but also of how it has become acceptable for some groups – deemed privileged merely by race or color – to be vilified. And, as Ms. Weitzman found out, individuals from these groups may face racial slurs without the perpetrators being punished. Here are two egregious instances of such attacks – racist and offensive, if an even-handed view were taken – to demonstrate what has now become permissible with the dangerous, false notion that only whites can be racist:
♦ Kamau Kambon, a black author who taught as an adjunct instructor at the North Carolina State University, stated during a conference at Howard University, Washington D.C., on October 14, 2005: “We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet.” The conference was televised nationally by C-SPAN.
♦ Dawn Queva, a senior coordinator at the BBC, has been consistently racist and abusive in her social media posts. She described whites as “melanin recessives” and a “barbaric bloodthirsty rapacious murderous genocidal thieving parasitical deviant breed.” She referred to Jews as “Nazi apartheid parasites” and said they themselves funded the “holohoax.” The BBC – which faces accusations of being antisemitic and anti-white for being consistently anti-Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre and calling Hamas terrorists “fighters,” “gunmen,” or “militants” – fired her only on February 5, ignoring her hateful posts for over the year she worked for the broadcaster.
A bizarre racist and gender identity paradigm is taking over, threatening to make it difficult to belong to any majority group. Or to a group with a reputation for hard work, academic excellence, or innovation. Or to be straight. Or not to belong to any of the fashionable groups or “intersectionalities” deemed persecuted by the purveyors of leftist-anarchist, DEI, CRT, and LGBTQ+ ideologies. And these ideologues are okay with ‘minor attracted people,’ as they refer to pedophiles.
The proliferation and mindless acceptance of these ideologies has made Disney, once a purveyor of wholesome family entertainment, transform Snow White into a feminist icon; reinvent Dumbo as a transgender female; and institute a Gay Day in the shadow of the Cinderella Castle. Having quaffed the woke Kool-aid, the Magic Kingdom has defenestrated soi disant “offensive” park greetings of “boys and girls” and “ladies and gentlemen” in favor of non-gendered “friends” and “everyone.” In December 2023, Disney expressed concern over woke politics affecting the bottom line. That might perhaps make good sense prevail.
In schools and universities, once bastions of classical, politically neutral, merit-based education, students who do not toe the politically correct line are ostracized. These institutions are fast becoming anti-white, anti-conservative, anti-Judeo-Christian. The humanities departments, especially, have become echo chambers championing victimhood on the basis of race, gender, identity, sexual orientation, and beyond.
In California, an elementary school used $250,000 in taxpayer dollars to pay Woke Kindergarten – “a global, abolitionist early childhood ecosystem” – to train teachers to confront “white supremacy” and “racism” in the classroom. The default position, of course, is that racism exists in the classroom and that if you are white, you are a white supremacist. Woke Kindergarten is notorious for being anti-police, anti-Israel, and anti-capitalism. Not unsurprisingly, during the two years of the program’s duration, students’ test scores fell. A teacher who questioned the goal of “disrupting whiteness” was banned from “training sessions.”
A similar scenario – imposition of political ideology on minors – played out with the arrival of a new headmaster at the Charlotte Latin School in Charlotte, N.C. When Doug Turpin, a parent and founder of the Coalition for Liberty, expressed concern, along with 60 other parents, about the woke and anti-Republican ideology force-fed to minor children, he was ostracized, deemed racist, and his children were expelled. He has since taken the school to court.
The Charlotte incident, especially, bears a connection to Ms. Weitzman’s experience. For it was her objection to the circulation of highly political articles – including one that was anti-Trump and anti-Republican – during the DEI meetings and courses she attended that riled her supervisors.
Attendance at these interactions was de rigueur, as were curated readings of articles such as “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” by Peggy McIntosh, and “Why Saying ‘All Lives Matter’ Is a Problem,” by Elizabeth Yuko, with no bearing on patient care. When Ms. Weitzman objected, she was told she was standing in the way of dispelling institutional conditions that foster inequities.
The breaking point, though, was her objection to SCCA employees being advised to follow guidelines prescribed in A Post-Election Guide to Changing Hearts and Minds, by Valerie Aurora. Its objectives: changing the minds of Trump supporters and standing up to the abusers they are empowering. It presented a series of scenarios designed to make Trump supporters feel uncomfortable.
As a Trump supporter, she protested. She was told it was a “non-negotiable fact that the Trump administration inspired hate speech and violence.” So, in essence, her freedom to hold an opinion and express it were violated by the anti-Trump arbiters of woke who punished her by terminating her for her views.
With DEI, CRT, and leftist-anarchist balderdash, the credo of E Pluribus Unum – out of many, one – that united America for centuries is being displaced to create hostility and disharmony by fostering selective victimhood. Why encourage these ideologies when our constitution already guarantees “equal protection under the law” to everyone?
SF Source American Thinker Feb 2024