According to John John Murawski, a white physician working in Raleigh, N.C., says he has participated in multiple diversity training exercises – including two in the last two years – without a fuss. But he was taken aback when his employer, Duke University Health System, said this summer it will roll out a comprehensive strategy to purge the last vestiges of racism from the workplace.

The way it looks to him, Duke basically wants him to admit he’s a racist and repent.

Like a growing number of organizations around the country responding to the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, Duke is adopting anti-racist advocacy as an organizational mission. That mission doesn’t mention time-honored workplace goals like color-blindness, meritocracy, or equal opportunity; instead, its target is the so-called complicity of America and its citizens in “structural racism,” “oppression,” and denialism.

“I feel like my employer is calling me 'racist' and I then saying I must agree,” the doctor, who requested anonymity, told RealClearInvestigations. He said he is troubled that Duke’s leadership is imposing its political ideology on staff, implicating employees in a sweeping moral narrative, and dedicating itself to the task of “uncovering this hidden racism the employer is sure lurks within.”

Workers are coming under increasing pressure to support social justice programs on race and gender that would have been considered radical just a few years ago and too divisive to be injected into the workplace. Now an organization’s commitment to fighting racism and identity-related “phobias” increasingly involves encouraging, pressing, or even requiring workers to get behind the company’s social justice mission. And it can spell trouble for employees who balk or publicly disagree.

Duke University President Vincent Price suggested in a June email that his take on American social relations is not up for debate, and that employees who dissent should reflect on their personal shortcomings.

Executives and managers are setting a confessional tone of guilt and penance, typical of anti-racism workshops, for all employees to emulate.

“I must continue my journey of understanding and empathy and examine actions I take, or don’t take, every day,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a June email to employees. “I take accountability for my own continued learning on the realities of privilege, inequity and race and modeling the behavior I want to see in the world.”

Such perspectives are filtering down to the rank and file. Workplace wokeness can take the form of employees confessing to their unearned white privilege in diversity training sessions, workers wearing social justice slogans on the job, and employees participating in company-mandated 8-minute 46-second moments of silence for George Floyd. It’s too early to tell if these cultural changes will become a permanent feature of the workplace, but some employees find them inappropriate, intrusive or even coercive.

With the belief that doing nothing is supporting the status quo, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health declared in June that employees who do not get involved are part of the problem: “We each must choose to be allies, as standing by idly or silently is to be complicit in perpetuating racist systems and structures.”

Backlash

The backlash to corporate wokeness has been almost immediate. Just last month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a religious discrimination complaint against Kroger Co., the grocery chain, for firing two conservative Christian employees who refused to wear mandatory rainbow hearts on their work aprons in an Arkansas store because, they said, it constituted advocacy for LGBTQ causes. The women’s attorney, David Hogue, said he is representing about 10 other Kroger employees who are seeking a religious exemption from wearing the hearts on their smocks.

Also last month, President Trump issued an executive order banning racial and gender stereotyping in federal agencies and by federal contractors. What Trump had in mind wasn’t old-fashioned chauvinists and bigots – he was targeting racial-sensitivity workshops informed by a doctrine known as critical race theory.

“Many people are pushing a different vision of America that is grounded in hierarchies based on collective social and political identities rather than in the inherent and equal dignity of every person as an individual,” the executive order states. “This ideology is rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans.”

Trump was responding to news reports, based on leaked anti-racism training materials, describing how white federal workers were required to sit silently in discomfort while listening to black colleagues talk about their pain. In at least one session white males were asked to take responsibility for their heterosexual privilege and they were instructed that white male culture is associated with white supremacy and mass killings.

Trump’s order, which goes into effect Nov. 21, has wide reach. It applies to all federal contractors, which includes many universities, nonprofits and businesses. But the White House was already moving against anti-racism activities before the executive order. When Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber issued a letter in September declaring that anti-black racism is spread deeply throughout the Ivy League school, the Trump Education Department evidently called Princeton’s bluff by treating the mea culpa literally – announcing an investigation under federal anti-discrimination law. It is possible, even likely, that if Joe Biden and Kamla Harris are declared the winner of the 2020 election, they will undo President Trump’s executive order on critical race theory (CRT).

Ordinary workers are paying the price for dissenting from the new workplace ethos. This summer Silicon Valley networking giant Cisco Systems fired several employees who posted “Black lives don’t matter. All Lives Matter” and other disapproving comments during a virtual all-hands diversity forum, according to Bloomberg News.

Meanwhile, David Shor, a white data analyst for the Civis Analytics consulting firm in Chicago, was canned in June merely for tweeting out a link to a study by black Princeton University professor Omar Wasow concluding that violent race riots in 1968 had a consequence unwelcome to the protesters: tipping that year’s presidential election to Republican Richard Nixon. He was fired for merely tweeting a link.

The trend is “a sign of the times,” said Ann-Marie Ahern, an employment lawyer in Cleveland at McCarthy, Lebit, Crystal & Liffman. “In recent months I’ve had several calls from people terminated for taking a position on one of these issues that is inconsistent with the position of the employer.”

What’s noteworthy about these cases is that the individuals lost their jobs or were disciplined for posting private opinions on social media, not for expressing the views at work.

Starbucks recently reversed its ban on divisive political messages and said it will allow employees to wear Black Lives Matter shirts and slogans.

Employment lawyers say that people who work for private employers have limited rights under the nation’s well-established at-will employment doctrine. Employers can discipline and dismiss workers for any reason, including a bad reason or no reason, as long as they don’t violate discrimination laws covering protected categories such as race, national origin and religion.

“It’s really important that people don’t overestimate the rights they have in the workplace,” Ahern said. “The employees need to be aware that they may not have a right to say ‘no’ to this.”

In outlining Duke University’s anti-racist mission, Price declared there is “overwhelming evidence” of systemic racism in the United States. Price urged employees to reflect on how systemic racism manifests itself in their churches, neighborhoods and their families. Furthermore, Duke employees “must” begin the work of “personal transformation” to become committed to anti-racist reforms, Price declared.

Summary

We are troubled by Price’s statement that this vision of American society will become obligatory in courses, research and diversity trainings. If you are asking yourself if Price’s letter contains echoes of 1930s Germany, the short answer is “It does.”

If you are asking yourself if anti-racism is sounding more and more like a super-woke religion, the answer is “It is.”

What we are looking at is Babylon’s emerging global religion, fueled by Revelation’s false revival. It attacks the Bible and casts doubt on the Word of God. It discards the atoning death of Jesus Christ, the divinely inspired authority of the Bible, and all the promises about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Like the rebellious builders at the tower of Babel, end-time Babylon is trampling on God’s Word and then attempting to build a monument to human wisdom and power.

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Links:

https://www.advocate.com/business/2020/9/16/kroger-workers-we-were-fired-refusing-wear-rainbow-aprons
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-truth-about-critical-race-theory-11601841968