School board member tweets: 'Whiteness is so evil'
Tweeting "whiteness is so evil" has proven controversial for Kesha Hamilton, who's on the Jackson (Michigan) school board, reports Kristina Watrobski for ABC News.
In December, Hamilton, who works as a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant, tweeted:
Whiteness is so evil.. it manipulates then says, I won’t apologize for my dishonesty and trauma inducing practices and thinks you should applaud it for being honest about its ability to manipulate and be dishonest.. #Deceitful #Perfidious
At a school board meeting, some asked the board to condemn Hamilton's remarks. "A person with such contempt and hatred for other races has no place in public life and certainly no place on a school board," one parent said.
Others defended her. "We're not talking about a person," said Myeshia Jones, a diversity, equity and inclusion specialist."Whiteness is the system, the ideology the belief, the thought that because your skin is white, you are superior to black people."
Several school board members thanked Hamilton's defenders, writes Watrobski. "They stressed the need for increased focus on equity." The district's enrollment is 46 percent white, 31 percent black and 6 percent Hispanic.
In an interview, Hamilton said that "whiteness" is a "white radicalized identity which refers to the way that white people, their customs, culture and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups are compared."