Johns Hopkins Medicine’s chief diversity officer is no longer in the role two months after she wrote a newsletter identifying people with “privilege” and sparking backlash.
In the January newsletter from the Baltimore hospital and research center’s diversity office, Dr. Sherita Golden wrote that “privilege” was the “word of the month,” defining it as “a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group.” Those social groups were categorized as white people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, men and Christians, among others.
Republican politicians and conservative media outlets seized the email as an example that diversity, equity and inclusion work is discrimination paid for with tax dollars. U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland’s only Republican congressman, described the diversity memo as racist and called for Golden’s termination.
The email was posted online by an account called “End Wokeness” and went viral on X, formerly known as Twitter, with about 69,000 likes as of Wednesday and attracting the attention of Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr.
Golden, a vice president and professor of medicine, issued an apology in January for defining “privilege” and retracted it.
“The intent of the newsletter is to inform and support an inclusive community at Hopkins, but the language of this definition clearly did not meet that goal,” Golden wrote. “In fact, because it was overly simplistic and poorly worded, it had the opposite effect of being exclusionary and hurtful to members of our community.”
Being a black female, she should be well informed regarding ” a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group”. In her specific case, she benefitted from being a black female. She met the quota.