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Johns Hopkins DEI Office Retracts, Disavows Recent Definition of ‘Privilege’

Chief Diversity Officer said definition – which included males, white people, and Christians – ‘had the opposite effect of being exclusionary’

Published: January 11, 2024
  |   By Chris Karr
Johns Hopkins DEI Office Retracts, Disavows Recent Definition of ‘Privilege’

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.

The existence of the newsletter was publicized by the popular X account End Wokeness, which received the tip directly.


The account’s Jan. 10 post has now been viewed over 18 million times.

In a follow-up Thursday post, End Wokeness claimed Golden’s subsequent retraction was the result of their post, which “went viral and drew massive outrage.”






In a Jan. 11 message to staff members, Golden said that, upon reflection, she “deeply regret[s]” her definition.

“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,” the message states. “In fact, because it was overly simplistic and poorly worded, it had the opposite effect of being exclusionary and hurtful to members of our community.”

Golden concluded: “I retract and disavow the definition I shared, and I am sorry. I will work to ensure that future messages better reflect our organizational values.”


When contacted by SCNR for comment, the owner of End Wokeness, which boasts over 2 million followers, provided the following statement:

The most privileged group in America is anyone with the title Chief Diversity Officer. These people are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to spew nothing but virulent hatred. They contribute literally nothing, yet get paid way more than the average middle class worker because they are the right race/gender/orientation. If that’s not privilege, I don’t know what is.

The retraction comes amid a renewed discourse surrounding the benefits and disadvantages of DEI frameworks in education and business.

Dictionary.com defines DEI as “a conceptual framework that promotes the fair treatment and full participation of all people, especially in the workplace, including populations who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination because of their background, identity, disability, etc.”

However, vocal critics of DEI claim the framework, while it may appear to be positive in theory, causes irreparable harm wherever it is implemented.

Last week, billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban mounted a proud defense of using DEI in business in a series of X posts. The defense was partly in response to X owner Elon Musk denouncing DEI as “just another word for racism.”

A Jan. 7 report from CNN claimed “DEI efforts are under siege.”

“When the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police set off a wave of racial unrest across the country in 2020, corporate America responded swiftly with renewed and public commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI),” the outlet said. “But nearly four years later, the very public ousting of Harvard’s first Black woman president [Claudine Gay] has led to a new firestorm of debate about DEI efforts in corporate America and beyond.”

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