Former Red Hat director sues Raleigh company over alleged ‘anti-white’ agenda

A former employee of the prominent open source software provider Red Hat filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday, claiming he was “a victim of Red Hat’s discriminatory employment policies.”

Kingsley Wood, who is white, started at the Raleigh-based company in 2015 and most recently worked as a senior sales director. In the lawsuit, Wood alleges that Red Hat’s emphasis on achieving a more racial and gender diverse workforce contributed to his termination last September. According to the claim, Red Hat aims to have women make up 30% of its global staff and people of color comprise 30% of its U.S. workforce by 2028.

Wood accuses his former employer of violating Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on race, color, religion or sex.

One of the law firms representing Wood in the case is America First Legal, which is headed by Stephen Miller, a Duke University graduate, who served as a senior adviser for former President Donald Trump. In December, America First Legal filed a federal civil rights complaint against IBM, Red Hat’s parent company, the day after a leaked video from 2021 showed IBM CEO Arvind Krishna and Red Hat CEO Paul Cormier detailing their approaches to achieving a more racially diverse staff.

In its latest annual report, IBM describes using “a diversity modifier” in its executive incentive program, which financially benefits leaders whose hiring efforts better reflect the diversity of their communities. In the 2021 leaked video, published by right-wing political activist and Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, Krishna explained executives who increase the percentage of underrepresented employees and woman would receive “a plus on your bonus.”

In the same virtual meeting, Cormier said some Red Hat executives were let go for not being “willing to live up to the standards that we set in this space. “I’ll be candid,” he said. “Without exception for privacy, I could name multiple leaders over the last year-plus that were held accountable to the point that they’re no longer here at Red Hat.”

In a May 3 email, IBM told The News & Observer it had no comment “beyond what’s in our impact report.”

Headquartered in downtown Raleigh, Red Hat is open about its investment in diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, hiring efforts. “We believe that the more diverse we are, the better we can innovate, serve customers, and contribute to the open source communities in which we participate,” the company states on its website. “Every day, we’re working to be a more diverse and inclusive company.”

In April 2023, Red Hat announced layoffs impacting 4% of its workforce or more than 700 employees. Wood was notified his position was going to be eliminated on July 17.

“These allegations are baseless, as neither race nor gender played any role in the decision to end this individual’s employment with Red Hat,” company spokesperson Stephanie Wonderlick said in an email Thursday. “Discrimination of any kind is not tolerated by Red Hat or IBM, and it has no place in the cultures or practices of either organization.”

Wood’s lawsuit against Red Hat alleges other white, male employees lost their jobs at Red Hat around the same time as him. Before being terminated, Wood was working from his home in Idaho after he refused to follow the company’s COVID-19 vaccine requirements. In February, Wood filed a discrimination charge against Red Hat with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over his termination.

As the vaccine requirement debate has ebbed, rhetoric around university and corporate DEI policies has heated up over the past year. In an interview last week with Time magazine, former President Trump vowed, if reelected, to combat what he called “a definite anti-white feeling” in the United States.

“It’s not an easy time to be a champion of diversity, equity and inclusion,” the Raleigh corporate culture consulting firm The Diversity Movement wrote in an email earlier this year.

In addition to the ongoing effort to repeal DEI initiatives across the University of North Carolina System, several large companies have cut back the diversity programs they had previously bolstered following the 2020 murder of George Floyd.

Yvonne Jackson, founder of the corporate culture consulting firm SocialEDG in Chapel Hill, said companies’ DEI efforts have often mistakenly been viewed through a social justice lens, rather than from a profit-generating perspective.

“Everyone wants a competitive advantage,” she said. “But the goal is how to stop looking at equity, diversity, inclusion as a means to just keep people happy, but actually use these to make sure your business is competitive.”

In the Spotlight designates ongoing topics of high interest that are driven by The News & Observer’s focus on accountability reporting.