Conservatives are up in arms after a handout about the topic of privilege that Canadian Home Depot stores distributed to its employees was leaked.
The memo describes different forms of privilege and is titled "Leading Practices," suggesting it is part of management training in dealing with the retailer's diverse workforce.
But to conservatives, the handout is yet another offensive example of runaway "wokeness." After the handout was shared by Twitter account Libs of TikTok—which focuses on ridiculing progressives—conservatives had a meltdown.
See the handout and Libs of TikTok's post below.
Libs of TikTok captioned its post, "Home Depot has gone woke."
After the handout went viral, Home Depot released a statement about the matter, clarifying that while it supports its diverse workforce, the handout is an unauthorized document that was not created by its official diversity, equity and inclusion department.
“This was a resource in our Canadian division and not part of any required programming."
Though the handout does deal in a lot of sweeping generalizations, the information contained in it is mostly basic, common knowledge for most people nowadays--like descriptions of white privilege and straight privilege, etc.
But it's easy to see why conservatives are offended: It's precisely the stuff the right wing routinely rails against as being "reverse racist" or anti-Christian.
For example, a description of white privilege reads:
“If you’re confident that the police exist to protect you, you have white privilege.”
Another section on religious privilege states:
“If you can expect time off from work to celebrate your religious holidays, you have Christian privilege.”
On class, the handout reads:
“If while growing up, college was an expectation of you, not a dream, you have class privilege."
There's certainly nothing new here, but that didn't stop the conservative outrage machine from going into overdrive on Twitter.
But they seemed to be outnumbered by people who found the conservative outcry more than a little ridiculous.
Whether the handout was sanctioned by the company or not, there's plenty to indicate that Home Depot's leadership are anything but "woke" liberals: CEO Bernie Marcus has donated more than $7 million to former Republican President Donald Trump's campaigns, which sparked boycotts in 2019.
