(OPINION) A “privilege” list from the Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Health Equity (DEI) caused a backlash that quickly resulted in a retraction on Thursday.
The @EndWokeness X account released an unearthed newsletter from Chief Diversity Officer Dr. Sherita H. Golden on the January 2024 issue of Monthly Diversity Digest. The message included “privilege” as the “Diversity Word of the Month” along with a series of descriptions considered “privileged.”
“Privilege is an unearned benefit given to people who are in a specific social group. Privilege operates on personal, interpersonal, cultural and institutional levels, and it provides advantages and favors to members of dominant groups at the expense of members of other groups,” the newsletter read.
It continued, “In the United States, privilege is granted to people who have membership in one or more of these social identity groups: White people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males, Christians, middle or owning class people, middle-aged people, and English-speaking people.”
The newsletter also emphasized, “Privilege is characteristically invisible to people who have it. People in dominant groups often believe they have earned the privileges they enjoy or that everyone could have access to these privileges if only they worked to earn them. In fact, privileges are unearned and are granted to people in the dominant groups whether they want those privileges or not, and regardless of their stated intent.”
After the message went viral, Golden sent out a new statement on Thursday retracting the newsletter and claimed it was not intended to offend anyone.
“The newsletter included a definition of the word ‘privilege’ which, upon reflection, I deeply regret. 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.
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,” Golden wrote.
“I retract and disavow the definition I shared, and I am sorry. I will work to ensure that future messages better reflect our organizational values.”
