Sen. Elizabeth Warren is blaming America for her own campaign staff mistreating its minority workers.
Politico reported Thursday, “A half-dozen women of color have departed Elizabeth Warren’s Nevada campaign in the run-up to the state’s caucuses with complaints of a toxic work environment in which minorities felt tokenized and senior leadership was at loggerheads.”
“I felt like a problem — like I was there to literally bring color into the space but not the knowledge and voice that comes with it,” one such minority staffer said. “We all were routinely silenced and not given a meaningful chance on the campaign. Complaints, comments, advice, and grievances were met with an earnest shake of the head and progressive buzzwords but not much else.”
Warren was asked about this toxic work culture during an MSNBC appearance with Chris Hayes.
While saying she believes the women who quit her campaign “without any equivocation,” the Massachusetts senator suggested America shares in the blame for this situation.
“I really work hard to try to build a campaign and a work environment where it’s diverse and open and everyone is welcome and celebrated and gets to bring their whole self to work every day,” Warren said. “But I’m also very aware that racism and oppression in this country have left a long legacy. And it creates the kind of toxicity where people, power structures, people take advantage of other people. It’s something for which we have to be constantly vigilant, and constantly determined to do better.“
Politico reports the staff departures come at a critical time for the struggling candidate.
“The six staffers have left the roughly 70-person Nevada team since November, during a critical stretch of the race,” Politico reported. “Three of them said they felt marginalized by the campaign, a situation they said didn’t change or worsened after they took their concerns to their superiors or to human resources staff.”