All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 13, 2024 - Epoch Times
31:22
[FREE EPISODE] ‘I Refused to Sign’—Nicole Levitt on Workplace ‘Thought Reform’
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
The language that was being used was so dehumanizing to white people and black people.
There was no way I was going to sign a statement saying that I was racist or that all white people were racist or that all of any race was anything.
Today I sit down with Nicole Levitt, an attorney who represents domestic violence survivors.
She filed a discrimination complaint against her employer, Women Against Abuse.
Among other things, she says they asked white staffers to sign declarations that all white people are racist, including themselves.
The civil rights laws are for everyone, no matter what your colour is.
Tonight she shares her story and why she decided to risk her career and her reputation to speak out.
This is American Thought Leaders and I'm Janja Kellek.
Nicole Levitt, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Thank you for having me.
Nicole, you work for one of the largest domestic violence non-profits in America, Women Against Abuse.
You went into this because this was a very important issue for you.
But sometime in 2020, in summer of 2020, you realized that something was really amiss.
So tell me about what happened.
So after George Floyd was killed, my organization, just like organizations all across the country, had DEI trainings and seminars and racial justice meetings.
And it was okay at first, but then they started getting excessive.
And it came to a point where I felt The trainings were all relying on stereotypes, discrimination, scapegoating, and We were split into affinity groups.
I found the idea of being split up on the basis of race to be very regressive, and it wasn't something that I wanted to take part in.
So I stopped going to the meetings, and we were still being bombarded with material every day about white supremacy.
White people, keep quiet.
White people, your silence is violence.
Everything is white supremacy.
It's a smog we all ingest.
And it got to the point where I felt it was really excessive and frankly illegal.
And it all came to a head for me when we were asked to sign a contract that would govern our behavior in the legal center.
And one of the items was, own that all white people are racist and I am not the exception.
And there was no way I was going to sign a statement saying that I was racist or that all white people were racist or that all of any race was anything.
So I refused to sign it, and then I had to go to a meeting with the DEI consultant at the time, which was supposed to be a short meeting, but it ended up being a 90 minute long session on thought reform.
And the reason they gave me for having to go to the meeting was to ascertain whether I was safe to be around my black and brown co-workers and my black and brown clients.
So there's so many vantage points I want to explore here from what you just told me.
Before we go there, I guess I want to find out a little bit more about you.
As I understand it, there are only 10 lawyers in the largest domestic abuse association in America, and you're one of them.
It's about 10, yes.
About 10.
And so, how is it that you got into this?
And maybe tell me a little bit more about where you come from.
Okay.
I was in private practice and I also have a license in therapy.
So I wanted to combine the two and I started representing domestic violence clients for free when I was in private practice and I really loved it.
And we also had a lot of potential clients come in that had domestic violence issues and did not have the money to hire a lawyer.
And I always found it so heartbreaking when we had to say, sorry, we can't help you.
And, you know, they had sat there pouring out their story to us for like an hour, re-traumatizing themselves.
And in the end we couldn't help them because it could end up being a very large expenditure And so when I got the opportunity to work for a nonprofit where that wasn't an issue and I wasn't going to have to tell a potential client no because of money, I was really thrilled.
So you described to me a situation where, you know, you were just having sort of general discussions with, I think, with maybe it was in the legal center in your organization and that people were kind of stunned by you saying that you didn't think there was racism.
Yeah, it's like, what are we talking about?
We're not racist.
Everyone here is committed to racial justice.
We represent black and brown clients and we do a good job of it.
And we're very thorough.
So I couldn't see where the racism was coming from.
I think the issue is the new definition of racism, prejudice plus power.
But, you know, I was stunned.
And then everyone was looking at me like I had two heads when I said, I don't think we're racist.
So there was this kind of a priori assumption that racism has to be there.
This is a component of critical social justice, as you described.
So you felt like this is how things were working, even before these DEI consultants were invited?
No, I didn't see it before the DEI consultants came in.
I see.
So tell me about that.
So what was this consultation about?
We had a lot of different, I'd say, educational materials on white supremacy from Tema Okun, Ibram Kendi, Robin DiAngelo.
We were presented with a lot of those materials and Kind of like prodded to discuss it in a workplace setting.
And some of them were more like confessionals, which I found very odd for a workplace setting.
But, you know, I talked to people at other institutions and found out that it was going on there, too.
And it sounds like it was really going on all across the country.
You're not allowed to dissent from any part of this ideology.
And if you do, you're branded as racist or bigoted or problematic.
And I think that people need to just kind of get used to the idea that people might call them racist or bigoted or problematic and not worry about it because it's that or you're going to be forever beholden to these ideas.
And if you do that, you'll lose your integrity.
Was there some specific moment that really affected you and you realized that this was something that you couldn't be a part of?
Well, I definitely didn't want to be a part of racial segregation.
That was abhorrent to me.
There are other things too, like Tema Okun's presentation on white supremacy.
It says that a worship of the written word is white supremacy.
So my response to that is we are attorneys and words are our trade.
So while we don't worship the written word, it is very important, as is punctuality, thoroughness, things like that that were kind of characterized as white supremacy.
And frankly, I found that to be...
Very disempowering for black people.
If you're saying that, you know, if you write well or you're very concerned about the way you write or you're concerned about being punctual or you're concerned about being thorough, that that's white supremacy and it's not a characteristic of black people, that's flat out racist.
And it's, you know, it definitely didn't describe my black colleagues.
How did your relationships change after, I guess, did people know that you went into this 90-minute session?
Did people know that you were bucking the trend?
How did that all work?
They knew I wasn't going to the affinity groups anymore.
I don't think anyone knew the rest of it, honestly.
I'm not sure.
What was the reaction to you not participating in the affinity groups?
So no one told me anything about it, but there was also another incident where a colleague of mine had emailed an article about antisemitism in the social justice movement, and she sent it to the legal center, and I chimed in and I said, that's great.
I would hope WAP would support this as well.
And that just set off a firestorm of controversy.
And I got back a ton of, let's say, disapproving emails that accused me of furthering white supremacy, taking the spotlight away from black and brown people, saying that, you know, anti-black racism is so much worse than anti-Semitism.
Just I felt it was really kind of excessive and very shocking that I got that response because all I wanted them to do was put that article in our anti-racism resources.
It was described as a problematic interaction that I even did that.
So, after that, I did have a lot of, I'd say, frostier relations with some of my colleagues.
Let me reiterate this.
You suggested that you add Resources on anti-Semitism to the toolkit.
Yes.
And this resulted in this vitriolic response.
And we shared this article, and this was in the midst of everyone in the legal center sharing articles about racism and defunding the police.
So it wasn't in a vacuum that we shared this article, but when we did, that was the response that we received.
And, you know, even management said it was a problematic interaction.
Of course, we care about anti-Semitism, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And the only reason why I felt that was important is because we were being asked to espouse a very specific ideology of oppressor versus oppressed.
And the way that they characterize Jews is on the side of oppressors.
Everything is black and white in a binary.
And I have found it, and scholars have found it, to be pretty anti-Semitic.
And so I wanted that to be part of the conversation.
What are we going to do with this part of it, guys?
Later on, that wasn't even in my top ten considerations because the language that was being used was so dehumanizing to white people and black people.
That I didn't want anything to do with it.
And I honestly believe that people in the organization espouse this ideology in good faith because they believe it to be helpful.
I don't think they were being malevolent.
You know, I don't say the same about some of the consultants and the originators of some of these ideas and the people who are making a lot of money off these ideas.
I wouldn't say that.
But in my organization, I think most people have...
The best interests of other people at heart.
I'll say that.
So, you know, as a result of all of this, you have a case at the EEOC, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Tell me how that all came about.
So after I refused to sign the contract and I had the thought reform session, that's when I knew I had to do something about it.
I did not want it to come to this because I honestly love my job.
I love representing my clients in court.
I love helping them with their issues and watching their transformation.
It's incredible.
But the rest of it I could no longer abide by.
And so I had a choice.
Keep quiet or finally do something.
And I chose to do something and my hope is that this will change and I can continue working there, but I don't know if that's going to be the case.
And you are still working there though.
I am still working there as of today, yes.
Well, let me read something from the document, which grabbed me, frankly.
First of all, you know, Levitt has satisfied all of the elements for a prima facie case of Title VII discrimination.
You can tell me what that is in a moment.
But WA has admitted to this disparate treatment, including admitting the differences in pay for white employees and promoting segregated workgroups to the EEOC. So what's this about differences in pay?
So WA brought in some consultants to do a racial equity audit.
The premise of the audit is where does white supremacy manifest in your organization?
Not does white supremacy manifest in your organization, but where.
So, you know, it's a priori they're going to find it.
In doing the audit, they needed people to volunteer to be on the audit committee, and those people would receive a stipend.
And they said that the black and brown members of the audit committee would receive a higher stipend due to the emotional labor that they would have to perform.
You said something to me earlier when we were chatting, preparing for this, and you said that all sorts of people write to you and say, we didn't realize that civil rights law applies to whites as well.
I thought that was astounding, and this is what this makes me think of.
Yeah.
A lot of people are under that assumption and it's wrong because the civil rights laws are for everyone, no matter what your color.
And, you know, it's true that we haven't always lived up to The civil rights laws and to our ideals in this country.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop trying.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't stop striving.
And it doesn't mean we should just turn it all on its head and say, okay, because we discriminated against you in the past, now we're going to discriminate against this other group of people.
Because where does that end?
No place good.
Well, you know, I'll read a bit more from the submission.
You know, they write, the lawyers write, one can only imagine the response if Black or Hispanic employees were subjected to lower stipends, excluded from, quote, healing spaces, told they needed to put in extra work, or told they needed to remove books by Black or Hispanic authors from their bookshelves.
I mean, you're kind of flipping it on its head.
Yeah.
And when I said, sort of like in the beginning of all this, we were bombarded with messages, emails, trainings.
It was all stuff like that, like white people decolonize your bookshelf.
Do the work, put in the work.
We were asked to do the extra work at home.
And honestly, if it would be beneficial, I wouldn't mind.
But this was regressive, and honestly, it was discrimination.
So I did not want any part of it.
So what is Title VII discrimination exactly?
Title VII is of the Civil Rights Act and it governs the workplace.
Don't discriminate on the basis of race.
That is the nutshell of it.
And part of my complaint is also about a racially hostile atmosphere.
And if every day you're subjected to hostile messages about race, that can be a hostile atmosphere in your job.
So you mentioned to me when we were talking offline that there was also kind of workplace guidance or guidance into how you should do your work that you found potentially problematic.
Maybe you can tell me a little bit about that.
There were a lot of discussions about defunding the police.
I'm sure we weren't the only organization to do that.
While there are problems with the police, just like there are problems with almost anything, our clients need the police to stop the abuse.
It's not the total solution, but it needs to be part of a solution.
And I found the messaging that it's dangerous for black and brown people to call the police In domestic violence situations to be dangerous.
What is a social worker going to do in one of these violent situations?
Domestic violence situations are some of the most deadly calls for police officers to attend.
So if you put a social worker or someone who's versed in restorative justice or something like that into one of these calls, what do you think is going to happen?
It could be very tragic.
Why do you think this guidance was being put in place?
I think the whole country was in sort of a hysteria about police brutality.
And I think the hysteria was partially brought on by the media by the way they covered any police shooting of a black or brown person.
Now, if you look at the research from Roland Fryer, he says that Black people did have more violent encounters with the police when you're just thinking of like sort of like soft violence, like being rupped up or stuff like that.
But as far as being shot and killed, they actually are not killed more than white people or any other group.
So I think that we were just being whipped up into a hysteria about it.
And so the people who are saying defund the police, I think most of them really thought that that would save people from getting shot by the police.
Honestly, like the police are not perfect.
And there are times when they don't believe victims or they tell victims the wrong thing or stuff like that.
Some of it might be a mistake and some of it might be callousness.
But I believe reform is the way to go and not just defunding.
And whether or not Philadelphia has defunded the police, they've definitely pulled back.
And our most marginalized neighborhoods have gotten worse, much worse.
And a lot of our clients come from the most marginalized neighborhoods of Philadelphia.
Well, I mean, this is something we've covered on other American Thought Leaders shows, but, you know, there is an epidemic of violence and murder, and it's, you know, Correlated with the reduction of police presence.
And certainly when we've done our own reporting and talking more anecdotally, but there's also data that shows this, is that people in these settings, the inner city and so forth, tend to be very pro-police, actually, and they want more of a presence.
Yeah, I have spoken to people from marginalized communities who have said, you know, this year I had to go buy a gun, I'm getting my concealed carry license, my house was shot into, my car was shot up, my neighbor's house was shot into.
I can think of at least four examples of people telling me that.
So I don't think in the end that This defund the police did any good.
I think actually the opposite, that it harms people and did harm people.
We have the highest amount of shootings we've ever had.
I would say, on average, maybe three shootings a day.
The highest number of murders that we've ever had.
And it's in all neighborhoods.
It's not, you know, confined to this neighborhood or that neighborhood.
It's everywhere.
What do you hope can happen with your organization?
And let's use it as a model for the bigger picture, too.
Well, I think organizations need to realize that this type of DEI training is disruptive to an organization.
It pulls organizations away from their core missions, and it's very divisive.
There are DEI programs that are not divisive that will bring people together, and those are more humanistic.
They will never divide people up by race because they're more about bringing people together.
Irshad Manji has one, Moral Courage.
Sheena Mason, The Theory of Racelessness, and also Eric Smith and Jason Littlefield have Empowered Ed Pathways.
You know, those are just three examples.
FAIR for All is doing excellent work in this area.
And we need to look at that.
If you need to have a DEI program, have one that is not going to be divisive.
Have one that's going to bring your employees together.
And really, you don't need to have any soul-bearing sessions at work.
You know, stay focused on your mission and do that.
And if people need therapy, they can do that on their own time.
Just, you know, provide them the resources for it.
I want to explore this a little bit.
You saw the mission shift.
It's not just the attitude towards the specific job, but you're saying the mission changed.
Yeah, anti-racism in the Kendian sense became part of the mission.
So racism with the definition of prejudice plus power, treating different racial groups differently, assigning characteristics to someone based on their racial group, based on the color of their skin, that's all part of this anti-racism.
To me, that's racist.
The way he said it, this isn't an exact quote, but it's to overcome contemporary racism.
How does he say it?
The remedy for past racism or past discrimination is discrimination in the present.
The remedy for present discrimination is future discrimination.
So why are we keeping the discrimination?
To me, that's the part we have to get rid of.
It's not a remedy.
So I want to talk a little bit about a paper you wrote.
I noticed it at the top of your Twitter feed.
So obviously this is something very important to you.
It's titled, How Social Justice Extremists Spawned a Generation of Progressive Anti-Semites.
And you co-wrote this with David Bernstein and Daniel Newman.
So, you know, what?
What?
So basically, critical social justice is anti-Semitic at its core.
Why?
Because it describes everything, it divides everything into a binary of black and white, oppressor versus oppressed.
And those aren't categories that Jews fit into.
So...
It pushes Jews into their category of white or white adjacent or benefiting from whiteness, which is very evil in their eyes.
Jews are put into that category and so discrimination against them is fine.
It doesn't matter.
They have power.
They have privilege.
And the end result is there's a huge argument on Twitter over whether Anne Frank had white privilege.
Yeah, I thought that was cosmically bizarre when I saw that discussion happening.
For the benefit of the audience, she perished in the Holocaust, right?
Yes.
At a very young age.
So there's this Strange ignorance, I guess, of reality, it almost seems, when it comes to applying these critical social justice principles, for example, to an extreme situation like that of Anne Frank.
Yeah, it's a very crude tool to use at certain times and with certain minorities.
I've seen it also done with Asians, but it's also they use it with Israel.
So Israelis are painted as white oppressors and the Palestinians are painted as, you know, brown oppressees.
And so everything Israel does is bad.
The Palestinians, everything they do is good.
And if you're on the side of justice, you have to be on the side of the Palestinians.
I thought it was very curious, is one way to put it, that BLM had kind of its position statements on all sorts of different things, like, for example, the nuclear family is the one that I remember the most, but also on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and so forth.
Yeah, so I think it was BLM's parent organization.
I don't know if that's the right way to actually conceptualize it, but Movement for Black Lives.
They endorsed BDS, which is a movement to not deal with Israel at all in any way, any form of investment or teaching or anything like that.
And it's very anti-Semitic.
There were a few BLM leaders that actually traveled to Israel and met with some Palestinians and included in the group of people that they met with were some known terrorists.
I lived in Israel for two years.
I lived there during the Second Intifada and I worked with the Terror Victims Association.
You know, at that time there were bombings and shootings every day.
Israel's a very small country.
Everybody knows somebody who was killed.
Everybody knows somebody who was injured or who has witnessed a terror attack.
So when I see where that kind of rhetoric can lead to, I'm not going to have anything to do with it.
And honestly, that's how I felt about the rhetoric against white people.
It's very dehumanizing.
And as Jews, we've been down this road before.
We've seen it.
It doesn't lead to anywhere good.
So we keep hearing about this idea that speech is violence, right?
And that people talk about being traumatized with microaggressions.
So given your, I guess, understanding or expertise around trauma, I guess I want to ask you about that.
How do you How do you understand that?
I mean, if someone is constantly exposed to negative speech You know, that can definitely traumatize a person.
But as far as microaggressions, you know, it's not even an aggression.
It's a microaggression.
What is that, half of an aggression?
I don't see how that fits in with trauma.
And there are a lot of experts who will say I'm wrong.
But I think the opposite.
I'm kind of going to go with Jonathan Haidt's view that Coddling people and saying that every little hurt you experience is a trauma is not going to help them.
It's very disempowering.
So what do you hope the outcome will be of your suit?
I mean, there's obviously your specific case, but there's a lot of people watching this very closely, right?
I hope more people stand up to this.
I hope people realize that there are more people like them than they think and they too can stand up to this.
This isn't about me and there wasn't anything special about me that made me stand up to it.
Anyone can do it.
You just kind of have to put your head down and swim.
So it strikes me that probably most of the people working for your organization are highly motivated to help women.
Yes.
It takes a particular sort of person to put their heart and soul into this kind of thing, right?
So it makes sense to me why you might step forward in this kind of a context.
But what surprises me, I guess, to some extent, is that so many people don't even You're co-workers who ostensibly had a similar level of passion and desire for social change, right?
So why do you think that is?
I mean, there are all sorts of reasons.
Number one is fear of being painted as racist or a bigot.
Number two is you lose friends when you do it.
You put your job in danger.
And I think one of the biggest things is just the cost of going into the legal system.
It can cost tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring suit if that's what needs to happen.
I have my own legal fund at Jewish Institute for Liberal Values.
It's at jilv.org slash Nicole.
But I think that there needs to be more institutions that will help people do this, because on your own, you know, it can be really overwhelming.
Well, I was going to say, it is a fund for you, but you didn't create it.
It was created when someone noticed that you needed help, right?
Yes.
So I just want to clarify that for the benefit of our audience.
I wish you the best of success, but any final thoughts as we finish up?
I would just like everyone to remember that the civil rights laws are for everyone and that this issue, although it's often painted as a right-wing issue, it's not about left or right.
It's about right or wrong.
Are we going to allow discrimination or are we ready to stop it?
Well, Nicole Levitt, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Thank you.
Thank you all for joining Nicole Levitt and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
I'm your host, Janja Kellek.
We reached out to Women Against Abuse, or WA. A spokesperson acknowledged Nicole Levitt has filed a claim with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
WA said while it, quote, cannot comment on this open EEOC claim, it believes, quote, our actions in relation to Ms.
Levitt and our racial equity work were legal.
▲
Export Selection