On Thursday, Johns Hopkins' Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Office retracted a "privilege list" after that list went viral and provoked a firestorm of comments.

The DEI (Diversity, Inclusion, and Health Equity) Office at Johns Hopkins Medicine has retracted and disavowed a definition of the term “privilege” provided to employees yesterday.

The definition appeared in a monthly newsletter sent out to staff members by Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Sherita Hill Golden, M.D. 

“Privilege,” selected as the “Diversity Word of the Month,” was defined as “a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group” in the Jan. 10 newsletter.

“Privilege operates on personal, interpersonal, cultural and institutional levels, and it provides advantages and favors to members of dominant groups at the expense of members of other groups,” the definition reads. 

According to Golden, privilege is given to anyone in the United States who has membership in one or more of the following groups: white people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males, Christians, middle or owning class people, middle-aged people, and English-speaking people. 

“Privilege is characteristically invisible to people who have it,” Golden added.

Well, that last bit is certainly accurate. Privilege is so invisible that it's as though it doesn't exist. One would suppose that I have some of this "privilege," being a white male Boomer; that's funny because I've worked since I was 12, my Dad farmed most of his life, I went to college on the New GI Bill, and in my 62 years, I've worked my melanin-deprived butt off for everything I have, and there are millions like me out there who object strenuously to the whole idea of "privilege."

The reason this list was retracted, of course, was because the list was leaked to X/Twitter, went viral, and provoked a firestorm of comments, few of them supporting Johns Hopkins' DEI office.

UPDATE: The Johns Hopkins DEI Office has retracted their "privilege list" after our post went viral and drew massive outrage https://t.co/DWirlJBpKg pic.twitter.com/j26FUKSp2w

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 11, 2024

This corporate poison, this idea of "privilege," has infiltrated not only health care and corporations, but even our military in recent years.

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Why do corporate, government, and university heads give in to this nonsense? It's certain that a number of them honestly believe in these horse leavings; it's more likely that many of them give in to the "woke" because it's easier than resisting them. And here, in this instance with Johns Hopkins, we have an object lesson. In this case, it was the nefarious prospect of "privilege," the idea that some people are advantaged by accident of birth; it entails, as I said the other day, the idea that a white coal miner in Appalachia somehow has advantages denied to a black, Harvard-educated attorney who lives in a Manhattan penthouse. Johns Hopkins has not given up on this idea, but they have backed down some. That's a good start.

The "woke" will continue to hold sway — in government, academia, corporations, and even in the military — until maintaining "woke" nonsense like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion becomes more troublesome than doing away with it. In the case of Johns Hopkins, all it took was an X/Twitter exposure going viral. And in dealing with the "woke" when they are pushing this nonsense, there's a key point that the non-woke must remember every day, take to heart, and put into practice: Never apologize. 

No one should apologize for someone else’s ignorance. No one should apologize for someone else’s intolerance. No one should apologize for voicing their own opinion. Never apologize to the “woke” for voicing an honest opinion honestly arrived at. Never apologize.

This is a culture war.  If we’re going to win it, there are going to be times to set our polite impulses aside. And, as we have learned from this incident, sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant.