Nice work, if you can get it

It must be nice to be able to make so much money working to destabilize oppressive whiteness that you can take a whole month off to lounge in the bathtub drinking champagne.

As reported by Emma Goldberg in the New York Times, a major “anti-racism” group in New Orleans treats its soon-to-be 34-person staff to a mandatory four weeks of paid leave each year to celebrate February as Black History Month. The group Beloved Community, one of a hugely burgeoning number of “diversity, equity and inclusion” organizations, operates in New Orleans pushing all the now-familiar theories against “white privilege” and “ white fragility” and in favor of critical race theory, “equity,” and “intersectionality.” Like others, they advocate breaking into separate caucuses of “affinity groups,” meaning white people meet with whites while black people meet with blacks and so on.

And while its website includes links to jeremiads advocating a “multiracial movement against global capitalism,” Beloved Community certainly seems to revel in the loot that comes from running a successful enterprise in the capitalist economy. How else can it afford to have its entire staff take a full month off at the same time?

The New York Times article admiringly recounts how Beloved Community CEO Rhonda Broussard is using the vacation time to take Brazilian dance classes and cook gumbo while the research coordinator is flying to Cancun, Mexico, and the head of education and programming sometimes uses the time to paint and other times climbs into the aforementioned bathtub. One wonders how the philanthropists who finance two-thirds of Beloved’s budget feel about their beneficence going to beaches, baths, and Brazilian dance. Oh, and daiquiris, too, according to the article.

All of which was preceded by a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, to a “sunlit hotel conference room overlooking the Mississippi River” in order to meet with a professional “rest coach” to help them “strategize” how to use their monthlong sabbaticals.

Nice work if you can get it. Perhaps some equity is more equal than others.