What goes around, comes around. You might assume that no one could be more politically correct than unpaid workers at a Chicago art museum. But that didn’t protect them from being fired for being insufficiently “diverse” — i.e., for being white:

The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), one of the world’s finest art museums, harbors (or rather, harbored) 122 highly skilled docents, 82 active ones and 40 “school group greeters.” All are volunteers and are all unpaid. Their job is to act as guides to the Museum’s collection of 300,000 works, which they explain to both adults and schoolchildren. I’ve seen them in action at the Museum, and they’re terrific.

Despite the position being unpaid, training requirements are rigorous.

Many of the volunteers—though not all—are older white women, who have the time and resources to devote so much free labor to the Museum. But the demographics of that group weren’t appealing to the AIC, and so, in late September, the AIC fired all of them, saying they’d be replaced by smaller number of hired volunteers workers who will be paid $25 an hour.

Paying the replacements will not result in more knowledgeable docents. But they won’t be Caucasian; that’s the important thing.

On tips from R F and Brian Brandt.