{"id":266545,"date":"2023-03-19T08:29:09","date_gmt":"2023-03-19T08:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=266545"},"modified":"2023-03-21T07:39:36","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T07:39:36","slug":"black-dei-director-i-was-called-white-supremacist-for-questioning-woke-policies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=266545","title":{"rendered":"Black DEI director: I was called white supremacist for questioning woke policies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rikki Schlott –New York Post March 18, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>\u201cI\u2019m passionate about elevating multiple perspectives and creating spaces where you can do that,\u201d Dr. Tabia Lee told the Post. \u201cAnd that\u2019s literally why I was harassed and bullied out of my position.\u201d<\/div>\n

Since becoming the faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Education at De Anza College in August of 2021, Lee said, she endured \u201cnon-stop hostility\u201d on campus.<\/p>\n

Now, she claims, she\u2019s out of a job after colleagues retaliated against her for questioning certain diversity, equity, and inclusion policies at the Cupertino, California, school.<\/p>\n

But her vision of diversity and inclusion, it seems, was the wrong one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to create safe spaces for everyone,\u201d Lee said. \u201cBut some people wanted me to create spaces that were just safe for them, and that\u2019s not my mission as an educator. That\u2019s not what I\u2019m here to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

After years of working as a middle-school teacher and an adjunct professor, and founding a network to help minority teachers attain national board certification, Lee was excited get a tenure-track position at De Anza, where her job includes designing workshops to promote inclusion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI researched them, and I thought we had similar values around diversity, equity and anti-racism,\u201d she said. \u201cI was selected, and I was like, wow, this is a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she quickly woke up to a rude reality.<\/p>\n

Lee said other college employees unleashed \u201cdaily, endless harassment right from the start.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she tried to help streamline staff communications by creating a Google Doc system, she said she was accused by a colleague of \u201cwhite-splaining\u201d \u2014 a term used to describe when white people patronizingly explain things to people of color \u2014 and of supporting white supremacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a black woman, and [they\u2019re] telling me that I\u2019m white-splaining,\u201d Lee recalled. \u201c[Everyone] acted like I had injured [my colleague] instead of it being the other way around, because I didn\u2019t confess to my white supremacy or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

It happened again when she raised questions about an official school communication capitalized \u201cBlack\u201d but not \u201cwhite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citing the recommendation of the National Association of Black Journalists, she suggested all racial groups be capitalized.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor that, I was accused of being a white supremacist,\u201d she said. \u201cThese constant accusations of calling people racist or calling them a white supremacists or saying that they\u2019re aligned with right wingers \u2014 that\u2019s such ridiculousness. It\u2019s very damaging.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also got blowback for questioning whether the school\u2019s land acknowledgement \u2014a declaration of solidarity with the indigenous people who lay claim to the land the college is built on \u2014 acknowledged the wrong tribe.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s a proponent of land acknowledgements, but was frustrated by the alleged inaccuracy. When she suggested the school pause the acknowledgements, which are typically recited at the beginning of classes, meetings and Zoom calls, until they fixed the issue, she felt her concerns were brushed off.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me that signals, it doesn\u2019t really matter,\u201d Lee said. \u201cWe\u2019re doing [land acknowledgements] to signal our alignment with critical social justice ideology and not to really make any real changes. It\u2019s a performative, almost pseudo-religious exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n

And after Jewish students and faculty members alike told her they\u2019d experienced anti-Semitism on campus, Lee asked for help organizing a summit to address the issue.<\/p>\n

Instead, she said, coworkers told her the event wasn\u2019t important and that Jewish people are white oppressors.<\/p>\n

Lee only made more enemies when she declined an invitation to join an informal, on-campus socialist network.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not identify as a liberal or a conservative or a Republican or a Democrat or a libertarian or socialist or a communist or a feminist,\u201d she told The Post. \u201cI don\u2019t identify with any of those labels, so I just had no interest in being a part of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem was I was going inside of the little socialist network bubble of third wave anti-racists \u2026 and they literally shunned me and would not work with me,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n

When it came time to review her for tenure, she was denied on the basis of an \u201cinability to demonstrate cooperation in working with colleagues and staff\u201d and an \u201cunwillingness to accept constructive criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee says those accusations are \u201cbald faced lies\u201d and\u00a0can\u2019t help but feel the reason she was denied tenure is because of her divergent opinions.<\/p>\n

Regardless, as of June 15th, she\u2019ll be out of a job.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to be eliminated by any means necessary,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n

For a diversity, equity, and inclusion professional who truly believes in the importance of her craft, the experience has been disillusioning: \u201cBringing people together to explore and talk about different ideologies was deemed unacceptable and not welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her mission, Lee said, is \u201csurfacing different perspectives that we have \u2026\u00a0\u00a0because once we\u2019re clear and understand each other, then we can identify points of commonality. The whole point is multiple perspectives.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people are trying to do it in an inclusive way \u2026 actually\u00a0being<\/em>\u00a0inclusive,\u201d Lee said of higher-education DEI practices. \u201cAnd those people are targeted for elimination and neutralization \u2026 by people who are working from extreme ideologies.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about legal action, Lee said \u201cI haven\u2019t ruled it out yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paula Norsell, De Anza\u2019s Coordinator of Communications, told The Post that \u201cfaculty members have comprehensive due process and\u00a0appeal\u00a0rights both under the law and negotiated through their bargaining unit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Working as faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Education at De Anza College “has been disillusioning”, says Dr Tabia Lee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Race"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=266545"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266580,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266545\/revisions\/266580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=266545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=266545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=266545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}