These days, it doesn’t seem to matter if you apologize for a “slip of the tongue,” unless perhaps you carry the influence of someone like Whoopi Goldberg. Then the cancel culture and “woke” society might forgive you.
But if you’re someone like Emily Mais, forgiveness and grace are foreign words. Mais, a former school administrator in Virginia, has become embroiled in a legal battle over what she says was a racially hostile environment, media outlets have reported.
A former assistant principal at Agnor-Hurt Elementary School in Albemarle County, Virginia, Mais is suing the school district claiming she was “bullied,” forced out of her job over accusations of harassment and racism for something she said during a training exercise last September. Fox News reported that during the training session centered around a book called Courageous Conversations About Race, Mais used the term “colored people” instead of “people of color” when asking about one of the presentation slides.
Mais’ attorney, Kate Anderson, said it was a “slip of the tongue” for which Mais immediately apologized.
“Another teacher who was in that training began berating her in front of others, even though she had apologized,” Anderson told Fox News. “The district started calling her into meetings and telling her that apologies didn’t matter. They didn’t care if it was a slip of the tongue.”
What they cared about was that Mais disagreed with the teachings. The book in question, which the Albemarle County School district began using in 2019, gives positive and negative characteristics to people based on race and says racism can be committed only by the “dominant race,” referring to white people, Fox News reported.
“She’s branded a troublemaker for speaking out against a policy that was overtly racist to students,” Anderson said. “It told teachers they had to treat students differently based on their race. Teach them differently, grading them differently, discipline them differently.”
Mais’ complaint alleges that when she voiced her concerns about the curriculum, “she was branded a racist, severely and pervasively harassed, relentlessly humiliated and ultimately compelled to resign from a job that she loved to preserve her mental health.”
Mais, who is white, claims in the lawsuit that “instead of training faculty members to embrace students of all races, [the Albemarle County School Board] uses a teacher-training curriculum that promotes racial division and encourages racial harassment.”
The complaint says that when Mais approached her principal, Mike Irani, about the harassment, he refused to take any action.
She also asserts that the district implied that if anyone was opposed to the new training methods, they should find a new job. {eoa}
Shawn A. Akers is the online editor for Charisma Media.
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