A Department of Defense official is being criticized for racially-charged social media posts, despite having the title as a diversity, equity and inclusion chief. Kelisa Wing, who heads the department’s Education Activity (DoDEA) wing, was accused of offensive social media posts targeting white people.
North Carolina news outlet WLOS reported that her employment is being reviewed by the department’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness because of her social media posts.
In July 2020, she tweeted, “I’m exhausted with these white folx in these [professional development] sessions.” Wing continued, “This 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 was announced in December 2021 as the new leader of the DoDEA, which organization runs K-12 programs for children of department staff. Wing has also been accused of “blurring the lines” between her government work and her personal interests and opinions.
She recommended reading a book by Ta-Nehisi Coates on anti-racism, entitled, “Between the World and Me,” and promoted Coates’s writings in a May 2021 presentation at the DoDEA’s Equity Summit. Wing also penned an opinion editorial that pushed the same book. She wrote, “In the scenarios that played out in my mind, my focus was in the streets, but as Ta-Nehisi Coates so eloquently states in his book ‘Between the World and Me,’ the streets and the school have become beasts of the same form.”
