Fired for Having White Skin

Fired for the color of their skin. It was not about opening up job opportunities for people of color. The Art Institute of Chicago just fired its volunteer docents, because nearly all of them were wealthy white women. Misogyny, anyone.

At a time when we are looking for stories that will make it look like the country is emerging from its woke mania, the Chicago museum comes along to dash our hopes. 

In many ways, this form of racial bias is at the basis of the new wokeness. After all, one Ibram X. Kendi, a man with a big academic title and no intelligence, has recommended reverse racism as a cure for racism. So, the Art Institute went out and hired a consulting firm that could show it how best to institute policies that manifested bigotry.

Is this the proverbial canary in the coal mine? Are we entering an era where people are hired and fired solely on the grounds of race. And besides, while we do not expect the fired docent core in Chicago to protest their firing, how long will it take before people who have earned their positions resent being fired (or not promoted) for being the wrong skin color. If  you think this is going to end well, you have been smoking the wrong kind of cigarettes.

It’s not exactly like putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum, but today’s America is putting morons in charge of cultural institutions.

Besides, docents are unpaid volunteers. Firing them does not open up job opportunities.

The Daily Mail reports:

The Art Institute of Chicago fired more than 150 volunteers and suspended its decades-old docent program after the famed museum hired a woke consulting firm that advised the cultural institution to ditch the 'wealthy white' guides and  prioritize 'equity and diversity.' 

Even worse, the mostly elderly docents, who are well-versed on the the exhibits at nearly 150-year-old museum on Lake Michigan, were terminated by email on Sept 3 because it wanted to 'rebuild our program from the ground up.' 

How did the morons who run the museum arrive at this point:

The museum - featured prominently in the 1986 hit film Ferris Beuller's Day Off - hired The Equity Project, a Colorado-based consulting firm, which found the program was outdated and would often skew towards wealthy white women and had too many barriers preventing people of color from entering the program.

'Sometimes equity requires taking bold steps and actions,' said Equity Project executive producer Monica Williams. 'You really have to dismantle and disrupt the systems that have been designed to hold some up and others out.'

Obviously, the fired docents are not going to picket the museum. And yet, contributors and donors should immediately stop supporting the museum. And the general public should boycott it.

The docents, mostly elderly white women, responded with a protest letter:

The docents responded with a letter of protest that pointed out that the position requires twice a week training for 18 months, five years of research and writing and ongoing further training.  

Conservative media has shown outrage. Chicago columnist John Kass called the plan proof that 'Idiocracy' has come to America, a reference to a Mike Judge film from 2006.   

'What the Art Institute did to its docent volunteers—not all wealthy and white—was shameful indeed. They love art. They study art,' he wrote. 

'And those of us who've been fortunate to visit the masterpieces there and listen to the docents don't think about docent demographics. Only racists think about skin. We think of their knowledge and passion and ability to communicate.’

Of course, you know and I know that the next step will be to judge artistic merit on the basis of the artist’s skin color. OK, strike that. In fact, it has been happening already, thus undermining America’s claim to be the world art capital.