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Today^s blacklisted American: Volunteers at the Art Institute of Chicago fired for being mostly white

Discriminated against in Chicago
Discriminated against by the Art Institute of Chicago.

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) has fired all 122 of its unpaid volunteer docents because they happen to be mostly white.

Many of the volunteers—though not all—are older white women, who have the time and resources to devote so much free labor to the Museum [average length of service 15 years]. But the demographics of that group weren’t appealing to the AIC, and so, in late September, the AIC fired all of them, saying they’d be replaced by smaller number of hired volunteers workers who will be paid $25 an hour. That group will surely meet the envisioned diversity goals. [emphasis mine]

Let me translate the highlighted words more honestly and accurately:

The docents were mostly white, and we can’t have that! We must discriminate in favor of blacks and minorities, at all costs!

Note that the institute had made a sincere effort in recent years to encourage minorities to volunteer, all to no avail. The racial make-up of its docent volunteers was thus entirely voluntarily and natural. No discrimination was occurring. No one was excluding anyone, especially minorities. Minorities were either just not interested or did not have the spare time to volunteer.

No matter! The equal rights of whites no longer count.

More information can be found here, including the text of the docents’ letter to the institute and the full text of the letter Veronica Stein, the institute’s Woman’s Board Executive Director of Learning and Public Engagement, sent to the docents, firing them. This paragraph from her letter uses the typical modern academic buzz words to disguise the real reason she is firing these docents:

We have developed a three-year plan during which we will design, develop, and implement a new, sustainable program that is more closely aligned with our redefined mission, values, and identity. The museum aims to build a responsive, sustainable, and inclusive program that integrates the goals outlined in our strategic plan: to honor and embrace our civic role by investing in Chicago-area learners, educators, and creatives [sic] and to reinvigorate in-gallery learning programs to promote accessibility, equitable teaching approaches, and greater inclusion of visitors’ cultures. We aspire to cultivate lifelong visitors, prioritize the evolving needs of our Chicagoland communities, and serve as a model for peer institutions.

Let me translate again:

We must discriminate in favor of minorities and blacks, while rewriting art history to inflate the contribution of those minorities to western civilization. Above all, knowledge and the search for truth is unimportant and must be deemphasized in favor of identity politics where we treat different races differently, based on our own bigoted preferences.

I think a boycott of the Art Institute of Chicago would be appropriate, but I also do not expect this to happen in Chicago, a city that has blindly voted for Democrats and leftists for more than a century, no matter how corrupt those Democrats and leftists have been repeatedly proven to be.

Regardless, it might be worthwhile to let the institute know what you think of their bigotry. The options to contact it directly can be found here, though interestingly there is no digital way to contact them about this kind of policy decision. You need to write them a letter.

Or you could contact their press office at 312) 443-3363 or by email at publicaffairs@artic.edu. I am sure they would love to hear from the public.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

21 comments

  • LTCSDS

    1) Museums are entertainment. You don’t need them to survive. So why would you drive people away when you probably already have a tight budget? They will never recover.

    2) Volunteers are ALWAYS hard to come by and are in short supply, and good ones even more so. Good luck replacing those folks.

  • Cotour

    LTCSDS:

    Money is free for these kinds of organizations, and its Chicago and the volunteers need to be black. And if there are no black volunteers they will hire some volunteers, because money is free.

  • Concerned

    And the Marxist purges continue (in fact they’re accelerating) as they sense the end of their Long March through all of our formerly hallowed institutions. God help us.

  • Cotour

    After they fire all of these civil servants who refuse to take an experimental “Vaccine” into their body forced by an edict from on high in the White House, who do you think is going to to fill their positions? Both civil and military?

    Anyone?

    “Properly” vetted and compliant applicants who will do as they are directed.

  • Gary H

    I wonder how much of the infrastructure bill goes to woke art museums

  • George C

    Museums often do not respect volunteer labor. An example would be the old Computer Museum in Boston.

  • Col Beausabre

    George C – I plead ignorance, what happened in Boston?

  • Col Beausabre

    They probably have a grant from Soros to pay their new “Volunteers”.

    Assume each volunteer gave one day of her time/week times 48 weeks/year (assuming vacations, sick time, etc) times $25.hour = $9600/year. (times 122 volunteers = $1,170,000) BUT the new docents are employees – and this is Illinois, run by the unions. They’ll be unionized. How soon before we about strikes because “$10k/year ain’t a living wage”? (it’s not supposed to be, you’re a part timer). You can add in things like payroll tax, medical and retirement plans (remember they’re union), Social Security contribution, etc. Total wages and benefits are probably double that figure, call it $2.5M/year. And, of course, they’ll be begging the public for donations and the politicians for subsidies. All because of a self-inflicted wound. Last point, what’s the passion and dedication of people who need to be paid to take the job compared with that of the true volunteers. “Hey man, it’s a crappy job, but it’s an easy gig”

  • wayne

    Serendipitously, I know a lady who volunteers at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; she’s in her late 50’s and has an Art History degree from Smith. Her children are grown up and her husband (salesman for a defense contractor) is on the road most of the time. She has resources, time, and contacts.

    “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”
    Rudyard Kipling (read by Tom O’Bedlam)
    https://youtu.be/hTwHCsTq3IU
    3:14

  • Col Beausabre:

    Well said. I need to up my writing game.

  • Jeff Wright

    I go the other way on this: the fired workers should sue for wage theft using Col.’s words…good paintings sold per court order-and away from the hands of vandals…and the terminated workers call for all museum funds go to it being a soup kitchen…with initiative/referendum calling for all elected officials to go on subbotnic picking up trash.

  • Questioner

    Cotour:

    I would like to add something to an earlier discussion:

    Short formula to characterize the basic political directions: left: equality of all people, liberal: freedom of the individual, right: order of an organic whole.

    Rights can be divided into: 1. Conservatives, 2. Bonapartists and 3. Ethnic nationalists.

  • Cotour

    These white devils were just fired from their jobs, these white devils are being fired ON for the own health and safety:

    https://youtu.be/tI4sQOrXFjw

    I several weeks ago proposed sarcastically that the Australians would have to be shot for their own health and safety.

    And what do you know!

  • Cotour

    What exactly is this all about? Compliance? Vaccines? Wearing masks? The publics health and safety? Globalism and the “Great Reset” / “Build Back better”?

    https://youtu.be/INPDbdtDvDs

    This is the model of forced compliance in Australia that the now Leftist / Socialist / Jr. Nazi Democrats in America embrace as we can clearly see and are attempting to install in America. The Democrats problems? The Constitution, the First Amendment, and the one thing that ensures the First Amendment, the Second Amendment.

    This is all connected. From the E.U., to Australia, to America, your freedom and ability to make choices for yourself is now officially at risk. Its all connected and related.

    Your a Democrat? You vote Democrat?

  • I file this one in the “and it’s a good thing” category. Those older white women have probably been voting Democrat their entire lives and believe that Republicans are evil racists. Not only is the schadenfreude of the leftists eating their own delicious, but it is (one hopes) a wakeup call to a bunch of useful idiots. The people who volunteer for that sort of thing are not “nobodies”. There will be chatter on the cocktail circuit.

    The best(?) thing about all of this anti-whiteness is that the Left is creating the very white interest group that does not currently exist but they use as a bogeyman. Be very careful what you invoke – sometimes repeating something enough times actually does make it true.

  • Cathy

    Oh wow.
    I went recently and no one knew anything about anything. (I’ve been many times in the past and this has never happened.)
    I asked “Hello, where is the Japanese art exhibit?”
    *blank stare*
    “You know, the special exhibit? The traveling exhibit?”
    *nothing*
    “Ok. I’ll ask someone else.”
    Found someone else. Same thing. Ended with “maybe downstairs?”

    THEN I heard a woman ask another employee, “Where are the Dutch masters?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You know, the Dutch masters. Ver Meer. Rembrandt?”
    “I’m sorry I don’t know.”
    The lady turned to another employee. Same question.
    “I have no idea.”
    What the hell. I even remarked to my daughter, “that’s so odd. No one in here knows anything today.”
    I hope the lady found her masters. How embarrassing.

  • Cotour

    Cathy, you sound very, very white.

    Soon you may not even be able to enter the museum (Im sure its very near where the massive Obama Globalist presidential worship center of “Fundamental Change in America” will be located.).

    The Japanese were molested, attacked and subjugated by the white Americans: https://youtu.be/0cKu1Ib1GIM

    The Dutch masters, all lily white Judeo Christians, painted their pictures for there wealthy patrons who ruled the world and promoted colonialism and slavery. Those pictures will have to be burnt!

    Cathy, your racism is shinning through. (How do you live with yourself!?)

  • Cathy

    Coutour,
    I hereby renounce my museum passes in reparation for the colonialism and systemic racism of my ancestors.

  • Cotour

    Cathy, here is something else you can get used to:

    IMO, this is a “Progressive” / Liberal / Leftist / Feminist (Its all related) attempt at destroying the cultural norms as established by modern Western civilization / Capitalist men of exactly what defines sexy and what defines beauty.

    And I think you would have to ask the question:

    What is being a woman about? And what in fact is sexy and is beautiful to a man? Or what is sexy or beautiful to a gay / trans or what ever kind of person you happen to identify as? (Even I can be politically correct)

    This unfortunately, and I am sure this woman, “LIZZO” is a perfectly nice and lovely woman and person, but this is a massive fail.

    How do you “Destroy” and recast the modern cultural norms as defined by Western civilizations men and Capitalism that define sexy and beauty? This is shock and awe, it creates a conversation and it anesthetizes one to the shock and awe, it may also enrage people. But is this really the answer? This is more of a performance art piece to me.

    A massive fail in defining what sexy and beauty is. IMO of course. And that is the problem with sexy and beauty, its the function of the subjective eye of the beholder.

    Just one more example of how the Left are attempting to dictate what you will be forced to accept. What you will be required to accept, in this case what is sexy and is beautiful. Shock and awe is not sexy, but she may well be a beautiful person.

    “Lizzo came to slay at Cardi B’s 29th birthday party.” She is killing me!

    https://ecp.yusercontent.com/mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpagesix.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F3%2F2021%2F10%2Flizzo-62.jpg%3Fquality%3D90%26strip%3Dall%26w%3D618%26h%3D410%26crop%3D1&t=1634064214&ymreqid=dc7face7-d905-7706-2f2c-5a0c6601d900&sig=miTeEw4tiVyShzsMfmwpdw–~D

  • T

    Will the museum now purge artwork based on race?

  • T asked: “Will the museum now purge artwork based on race?”

    Yes. I’m not even joking a little bit.

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