THE "WOKE" HAVE NO DECENCY: THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO FIRES ITS VOLUNTEER DOCENTS
Vol. I | Issue. 32 | September 30, 2021
“Woke-ism” amounts to nothing more than a suicide pact of America's cultural institutions. This disease now pervades virtually every cultural institution in America like a burrowing termite eating away at their foundation. One of the latest and more egregious examples of this disease in action was The Art Institute of Chicago’s wholesale firing of one of its greatest human assets; its 150 volunteer docents.
This decades-old cadre of volunteers are highly trained and educated in guiding tours of The Art Institute of Chicago. All 150 were summarily dismissed and sent packing in by Veronica Stein "Woman's Board Executive Director of Learning and Engagement". The Docents are the volunteer corps that have studied and labored long and hard to offer museum visitors knowledge, insight, and context on their tours of the museum. The reason for their wholesale termination? Most, but not all, are white. There is a presumption that they as volunteers are members of some sort of white women’s ruling class who do not reflect the values of "equity and inclusion" sought after by the newly required social order of Woke Diktats.
To become a docent at The Art Institute of Chicago was no easy path. It required a year-long course of study and constant learning about the museum’s ever-changing collection. In short, these volunteer docents have something approximating a Ph.D. in “Chicago Art Institute”. The vast majority of them are white, middle-aged to senior, and female. That demographic has placed them right in the bullseye of “Woke” hatred. Were one to take a survey of their political predilections, a substantial plurality would be found to be liberal in their politics, far more democrat than republican, open-minded to new ideas in Art, Culture, and Politics. But none of that matters…
Woke-ism hates America and western civilization to the bone. If the goal of “Woke” was to create more inclusion, Stein’s marching orders from above would have been outreach to those communities not served by the Docent Corps to train and include them so that their perspective and life’s experience could expand this group of dedicated volunteers in order to enrich the visitor and patron experience. Inclusion is not part of the “Woke” agenda. Termination of these volunteer docents was a hate-bomb of exclusion. True inclusion is a constructive endeavor.
Just like every other lie and narrative spawned by “Woke”, volunteerism itself is considered to be the exclusive domain of "white privilege" ie white racists who have too much time on their hands and don’t have to work for a living.
The Art Institute of Chicago was a world-class institution that houses a collection of impressionist art seconded only to the Louvre, will never recover from this horrible jettison of its finest asset of human capital. The Art Institute of Chicago docent corps is a dedicated, passionate, decade’s long welcoming presence that who were fired clearly due to the color of their skin and the ugly perception of their “wokely” despised demographic, not the content of their character or the vast contributions they have made.
“Woke” now rules the halls of every scaled cultural institution in America. Who will be next? Probably Veronica Stein because cancerous revolutions always destroy their own useful idiots and “Woke” will prove to be no exception.
-Emes