When diversity is emphasized over merit, the Pentagon hiring an anti-white diversity chief should come as no surprise. But weakening of the nation’s defense capability is the consequence. So, putting aside for a moment why the Department of Defense (DOD) believes it needs another organization pushing the woke agenda, what does this say about the hiring practices at the Pentagon?
Fox News first broke the story about the Pentagon hiring a Chief of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (CDEI) with an anti-white Twitter legacy. Where are the vetting standards when a person with behavior like Kelisa Wing, the DOD's CDEI, is brought on to work in the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA)? Months after taking on her duties, we learn she has a spate of tweets touting an anti-white attitude. What is more troubling is that Wing manages curriculum for DOD overseas schools – a perfect and fertile ground for infecting children with woke hogwash.
Biting the Hand That Feeds
A veteran of the US Army, Wing tweeted about her experience with professional development seminars. "I'm exhausted with these white folx [a made-up Twitter word used in the LGBTQ crowd to mean inclusive people] in these PD sessions this lady actually had the CAUdacity (caucasian audacity) to say that black people can be racist too…I had to stop the session and give Karen the BUSINESS…we are not the majority, we don't have power," Wing wrote back in June 2020, according to Fox. So, what do we know about this former US Army soldier, other than she tires easily and favors social media words? First, she was a good and valued teacher in the DoDEA system. To Wing's credit, she was chosen as 2017 DoDEA Teacher of the Year, a coveted award. Having received this honor makes her railing against the people who recognized her teaching skills and contribution to educating kids of military parents difficult to understand. What we also can surmise is that being a good teacher doesn’t automatically qualify someone with fringe ideas to be a DOD executive.
(Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
She was promoted to the position of CDEI head in 2021 when the Biden administration came into office, so there was time to have vetted this individual. Moreover, because Wing was not disqualified for her public anti-white attitudes, the conclusion is not hard to come to these beliefs are what the Biden team wants to promote. Finally, as one might expect, Wing's outspoken fringe thinking caught the attention of congressional leaders.
Questions About the New Diversity Chief
In a September 16, 2022, letter to Secretary of Defense Austin, "Twenty-two Republican legislators pressed the Pentagon last month for answers about the incendiary messages," Caitlin Doornbos reported for New York Post. The representatives explained their deep concern that Wing's tweets indicate an "egregious bias which is contrary to the goals of the DoDEA." Additionally, the text of the congressional letter raises the point made above regarding the thinking that recommended Ms. Wing as a good candidate for an executive position in the Defense Department.
"Furthermore, we have reservations of the judgement of DoDEA Director Thomas Brady. Director Brady once stated, ‘Kelisa Wing is exactly the right person to lead our efforts in building on the foundational work done to support meaningful change in our organization,’ which shows either poor judgement or willful ignorance."
The congressional inquiry concludes with the seminal question: "Has Ms. Wing's radical ideology been integrated into the curriculum proposed by the DoDEA?" Said slightly differently, are the impressionable minds of deployed parents' children being influenced by the divisive notions held by Ms. Wing?
Anyone who has worked in the Pentagon can attest that it takes as much energy to defeat a bad idea as it does to successfully promote a good one. In a perverse way it is a strange upside to a bureaucracy. There is a normalizing or egalitarian effect. So, what should happen with Ms. Wing's radical agenda (if she weathers calls for her dismissal) is it becomes the topic for a bureaucratic "cross-functional working group" to determine whether it merits implementation or further discussion. Further discussion wins 99% of the time, and eventually in the not-so-distant future, the initiative fades away. If it doesn't, taxpayers will know the woke nonsense has metastasized throughout the DOD bureaucracy.
The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliation.
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