A member of a Florida school board has denied responsibility for a social media post that implied her professional achievements had not been acquired via white privilege.
Broward School Board member Ann Murray claims that a controversial meme that appeared on her personal Facebook page on Sunday, June 21, was posted by a hacker who had compromised her account.
The meme, which was criticized as racist by some other Facebook users, was shared on 77-year-old Murray's page at around 5:30pm after being posted by another user, Keith Medford, on June 8.
The content of the meme appears to imply that there is no inherent career advantage to being white.
It read: “When I was born, they must have ran out of white privilege because I had to work my ass off to get where I am.”
Murray was distraught by the appearance of the post on her page and swore on her husband's grave to the Sun Sentinel that she was not responsible for sharing it.
“Goodness gracious. Why would I put something out there like that?” said Murray.
“I only post funny things, mostly about animals."
The school board member said that she was now considering closing her Facebook account down following repeated hacks of her page.
“That’s the second time in two months my Facebook page has been hacked," said Murray. "I may be shutting the whole thing down."
The controversial meme denying the existence of racial bias in the workplace was removed from Murray's page by 9pm on the day on which it was posted, but not before other Facebook users had torn into the school board member for apparently sharing it.
Commenters described what they believed to be Murray's actions as “racist,” “tone-deaf,” “disgusting,” and “reprehensible.” The supposed sharing of such a grammatically incorrect message by a school board member attracted no criticism.
Following the post's removal, Murray posted a message stating that Facebook customer service had notified her “about UNUSUAL account activity, with someone signing in from UNRECOGNIZED DEVICES.”
She added: “I apologize for anything that posted, that was disrespectful.”
Previous posts on Murray's Facebook page include messages supporting America's black community such as AFL-CIO endorsements of prominent black political candidates and a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.