WASHINGTON — A House Armed Services subcommittee is pressing the Pentagon about whether it has taken any action against a Defense Department schools administrator whose disparaging comments about white people drew criticism from Republicans last year.
Kelisa Wing, the Department of Defense Education Activity’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer, made national headlines in September when Twitter posts by the self-described “woke” official resurfaced.
“I am exhausted by 99% of the white men in education and 95% of the white women,” Wing wrote in one post.
“Where can I get a break from all this white nonsense?” she said in another.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), chairman of the Military Personnel Subcommittee investigating the matter, told The Post that he plans to “focus on rooting wokeness out of our military.”
“Far-left radicals with a history of racist comments shouldn’t have their paychecks cut by taxpayers, and they especially shouldn’t have a senior role at the DoD’s primary school system,” Banks said.
The Pentagon in October told The Post that it was reviewing Wing’s Twitter posts after 22 Republican legislators had pressed it the previous month for answers about the incendiary messages. Now Banks’ subcommittee wants to know what came of that review.
Wing’s comments, dating back to at least 2020, included multiple racially charged references, including the use of the pejorative “CAUdacity,” a portmanteau combining the words “Caucasian” and “audacity.”
“[T]his lady actually had the CAUdacity to say that black people can be racist too … I had to stop the session and give Karen the BUSINESS,” Wing wrote. “[W]e are not the majority, we don’t have power.”
In a letter Monday co-led by Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), Banks’ subcommittee requested that the Pentagon release “all documents and communications” indicating whether DOD officials knew of Wing’s “inappropriate comments” prior to her hiring.
“This kind of divisive rhetoric has no place anywhere, particularly for someone employed in a job whose purpose should be to encourage equal treatment of everyone,” according to the letter, exclusively obtained by The Post.
“As Ms. Wing’s behavior wildly betrayed her employment mission, it begs the question whether her views are more widely held throughout portions of DOD leadership or if they are merely a product of her own intolerance,” the note added.
The subcommittee also asked for all educational material “promoting the exclusion, denigration, discrimination” of people based on race “or the culpability of any living person for historical actions,” as well as “all early childhood and primary school syllabi, instructional materials, teacher manual and curricula used throughout DOD.”
“We sincerely hope these are not the views being propagated to schoolchildren of our service men and women stationed throughout the world,” the subcommittee said in its letter.