‘Wokeness’ at Smith College forces staffer to quit

February 24, 2021 Amber28 US 0

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 8:16 AM PT – Wednesday, February 24, 2021

A college in Massachusetts has denied a former employee’s allegations that the campus was “hostile to white people.”

In a statement Monday, President Kathleen McCartney said Smith College has a “commitment to advancing equity and inclusion.” She added, it’s not discriminatory because their “strategies” are grounded in research on unconscious biases and systemic racism.

McCartney went on to explain that employees are reflecting on their inadvertent contributions to oppression through trainings and workshops in order to “redress this reality” of inequity. This rebuttal occurred after student coordinator Jodi Shaw said she was harassed into resignation.

In a recent video, Shaw stressed that participating in racially prejudiced behavior is a condition of employment at Smith College. She also noted that these workshops reduce the identity of staff to their skin color and anyone who questions these tactics is harassed.

Shaw said not only was she required to acknowledge her so-called white privilege and comply with training to fix her so-called implicit bias, but employees were also taught to stereotype white women as privileged and black women as powerless regardless of title or merit.

“It was an agonizing decision, I knew I could not return to work at such a hostile environment,”she explained. “And then later I called attention to it in a video and it didn’t change, the administration did not change it. In fact, they enabled it to get worse.”

I made this video last night and forgot to tweet it out. A little bit about my decision-making process. https://t.co/xq57QJJNN9

— Jodi Shaw – Former Smith College Employee (@Smith_Surge) February 22, 2021

This comes as universities across the country face increasing backlash over their support of “critical race theory,” which claims American society is inherently prejudiced and needs to be dismantled while all white people are “born oppressors” who need to be re-educated.

During a recent interview, Cornell University Professor William Jacobsen weighed in, noting many parents have no clue that behind closed doors students and faculty are being coerced into silence as well as and pushed to admit anyone who disagrees with this radical ideology is racist.

Jacobsen pointed out that in September the university announced several hundred staff members and students under-signed a set of demands ordering the university to carry out a so-called anti-racist initiative.

While this measure awaits approval in the college’s Senate, Jacobsen warned such policies are not being used to end racism. Instead, they are being used as a political tool to advance a far-left socialist agenda and reduce the identity of Americans to their skin color rather than their character.

“It perpetuates what’s been going on. They claim it’s negative, so I think what’s the downside…it brands people who are not racist as racist because that’s the way they’ve constructed it,” stated the Cornell University professor. “It demonizes large sections of the campus and it doesn’t change any minds. I don’t know how it could get any worse than that.”

While the president of Smith College denies trying to buy Shaw’s silence, the former employee maintains that she is refusing any sort of financial compensation. She also plans to pursue legal action against the college.

“By choosing freedom, I choose the right to continue to discuss and talk about what’s going on at Smith College,” Shaw stated. “And more importantly, I retained the right to file a legal claim in a U.S court of law against Smith College and that’s what I intend to do”

Shaw said she hopes this lawsuit sends a strong message to all American educational institutions that people in the workplace should be treated according to the content of their character, not their race or ethnicity.