Tesla CEO Elon Musk has waded in on a woke row after a hospital listed people automatically guilty of privilege.
Musk took to social media to leave a short but clear comment on the matter.
The 52-year-old, who acquired the social media giant in October 2022, simply said: “This must end!”
Musk was responding to an update released by a hospital in Baltimore.
John Hopkins Hospital with Elon Musk and Sherita Hill Golden as insets
JOHN HOPKINS HOSPITAL/GETTY
John Hopkins Hospital’s chief diversity officer Sherita Hill Golden uploaded an update which described “diversity” as the word of the month.
It said: “Privilege is a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group.
“Privilege operates on personal, interpersonal, cultural and institutional levels, and it provides advantages and favours to members of dominant groups at the expense of members of other groups.”
The Maryland-based hospital identified white people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males, Christians, middle or owning-class people, middle-aged people and English-speaking people as being privileged.
It added: “Privilege is characteristically invisible to people who have it.
“People in dominant groups often believe they have earned the privileges they enjoy or that everyone could have access to these privileges if only they worked to earn them.
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“In fact, privileges are unearned and are granted to people in the dominant groups whether they want those privileges or not, and regardless of their stated intent.”
However, Musk was not the only prominent figure left raging.
Donald Trump Jr, son of the 45th President of the United States, said: “The rot and racism in higher education goes so much further Harvard, MIT, and Penn (my alma mater) it has taken over virtually every institution and needs to end now.”
Golden was forced to back-peddle on the situation.
In a follow up email, she said: “The newsletter included a definition of the word privilege which, upon reflection, I deeply regret.
Tesla founder Elon MuskPA“The intent of the newsletter is to inform and support an inclusive community at Hopkins, but the language of this definition clearly did not meet that goal.
“In fact, because it was overly simplistic and poorly worded, it had the opposite effect.'
“I retract and disavow the definition I shared and I am sorry.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for John Hopkins Medicine added: “The January edition of the monthly newsletter from the Johns Hopkins Medicine Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity used language that contradicts the values of Johns Hopkins as an institution.
“Dr Sherita Golden, Johns Hopkins Medicine's Chief Diversity Officer, has sincerely acknowledged this mistake and retracted the language used in the message.”
