Wisconsin’s Democrat governor was the superintendent until 2019.
QUICK FACTS:
- Wisconsin Democrat Governor Tony Evers’ Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has asked white people to “wear a white wristband as a reminder about your privilege.”
- Evers’ was the superintendent of the state DPI and is up for reelection after having led the department from 2009-2019 and later becoming the governor.
- Evers has worked alongside the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and speaks highly of VISTA, saying it makes the state “very fortunate.”
- A joint document by VISTA and the DPI made the suggestion about wristbands for white people.
FROM THE DOCUMENT:
- A document titled “Addressing Racial Privilege: A Mental Model for White Anti-Racists,” was distributed at a joint DPI-VISTA training in 2013. This was during the time that Evers was the superintendent, and the document urged people to take part in several anti-white racial shaming exercises.
- Included in those exercises was the prompt encouraging readers to wear a wristband as “a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.”
- The document also asked white people to “find a person of color who is willing to hold you accountable for addressing privilege” and to “make a daily list of the ways privilege played out, and steps taken or not taken to address privilege.”
BACKGROUND:
- Recently, American Express was sued for its anti-white policies, as American Faith previously reported.
- There have been other instances of similar cases, including a legal battle in late 2021 in which a former top executive at a North Carolina-based healthcare system won $10 million in a legal battle over his claim that he lost his job because he is a white man.
- Starbucks was sued in 2019 for discriminating against white employees after a white female employee proved her claim to the court’s satisfaction that she was unfairly punished to appease protesters.
