Fired Black DEI director files lawsuit saying university ‘was illegally targeting whites’

a black Diversity, equity and inclusion The principal (DEI) who was fired by his California community college filed a lawsuit last week accusing the school of “unlawfully targeting whites.”

Tabia Lee, tenured faculty member, was dismissed in March by De Anza College, a public community college in the San Jose area, after she said she questioned the anti-racist “orthodoxy” in her position as DEI director.

“That’s what they told me [I] I was just supposed to advance what I at the time called a third-wave anti-racist ideology,” Lee. said In March

On July 10, Lee archived a lawsuit against the university, alleging that a hostile DEI department “unlawfully targeted white people by race.”

The complaint says Lee, who is black, was accused of “asking for white people” and not being the “right kind of black person.”

“She is black, but first and foremost, Dr. Lee is a professor dedicated to humanism and civil rights,” the complaint says. “She teaches that people should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. De Anza is hostile to this concept.”

Community College District as reported informed Lee in a letter that the official reasons for his dismissal were a “persistent inability to demonstrate cooperative work with colleagues and staff”, his “unwillingness to accept constructive criticism”, and “no expectation on the part of the Tenure Review Committee…that improvements can ever be achieved in these two critical areas”.

“These are people who should definitely know better,” Lee he said Newsweek. “And the way they behaved was what they say other people do to marginalized people. They literally marginalized me as an individual, shunned me, and worked very hard to push me out.”

Lee previously said his firing came after he questioned and opposed some of the department’s initiatives at DEI, Inside Higher Ed. reported.

He opposed the university’s land grants for a Native American tribe, tried to headline a “Jewish inclusion” event on campus, refused to join a “socialist network,” refused to use the gender-neutral term “Latino,” and questioned why “black” was capitalized but not “white.”

Lee said she was called a “bitch” and dictatorial for suggesting a pause in the university’s land grants, when what she really wanted to do was add changes that Native American tribes themselves suggested.

Lee also said the same person who invited her to join the “socialist network” accused her of disrespecting a Black Lives Matter founder.

At one point, a university employee even accused her of supporting white supremacy, Lee said.

She also said, “I don’t participate in gender pronouns anymore because I find that the same toxic ideologies around racial ideologies are being pushed under gender ideologies.”

Lee is currently seeking to regain his former teaching position along with restitution for financial damages.

The community college district said in a statement that it “has an obligation to protect privacy in personnel matters.”

“Without commenting on any specific matter, we can share that faculty members have comprehensive appeal and appeal rights, both under the law and negotiated through their bargaining unit,” the Foothill-De Anza Community School District. said.