Last semester, New York University hosted a whites-only “anti-racism” workshop designed to teach white people how to “unlearn racism.”
Costing $360 to attend, the “From Integration to Anti-Racism” workshop convened six times between February and June, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
“Organized by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education, the workshop was ‘designed specifically for white public school parents’ committed to ‘becoming anti-racist’ and building ‘multiracial parent communities,’” according to the Beacon.
Yet despite the goal of building “multiracial parent communities,” only whites were allowed to attend. In fairness, the organizers of the event spread a document that purported to explain away the racial segregation:
The handout, produced by the nonprofit Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere, argued that white people need spaces where they can “unlearn racism” without subjecting minorities to “undue trauma or pain.” https://t.co/mCr2K7zCik
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
“In order to challenge racism and dismantle white supremacy, white people need to unlearn racism and discover the ways we enact white privilege. This is a long, difficult, and sometimes painful process,” the document reads.
“It’s helpful to have a space where other white people engaged in this process can support and challenge us, without having to always subject people of color to further undue trauma or pain as we stumble and make mistakes. Having a community of white anti-racist people gives us hope, helps us grow our practice, and gives us strength to stay in it for the long haul,” it continues.
This message was reiterated during the first day of the workshop when an attendee noted that it seemed “a little counterintuitive” to exclude minorities. In response, Barbara Gross, the associate director of Steinhardt’s Education Justice Research group, lectured her that it was for their own good.
“The purpose is to create a space where we can talk about our racism with each other and support each other through that and hold each other accountable without burdening the people of color in our lives — because people of color are dealing with racism really like all the time, every minute of every day. …. It’s like a harm on top of a harm to hear our racist thoughts,” she said.
Listen:
That said, was the workshop even legal? After all, even though the Supreme Court JUST struck down affirmative action, it’s always been “illegal for universities to practice other forms of race discrimination,” the Beacon notes.
Speaking with the Beacon, five lawyers warned that the workshop likely violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which reportedly applies to the recipients of federal funds.
“It’s quintessentially illegal. This episode illustrates the horseshoe theory whereby left- and right-wing radicals end up agreeing on race-based societal balkanization. It’s like that social media meme: ‘woke or KKK?’” Ilya Shapiro, the director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, said.
“They are literally running a ‘whites only’ program in the interest of so-called social justice. I find it inconceivable that the people putting these programs together don’t see the irony,” attorney Samantha Harris added.
The school for its part told the Beacon that it would be “reviewing these matters to determine whether they conform to our standards.”
As for the workshop, the Beacon described it as “a fascinating study of how one group of white liberals guilt-tripped and self-flagellated their way into segregation.”
“Participants seemed petrified by the possibility that they could ‘harm’ a person of color with a misplaced comment or anecdote, a fear that made the whites-only training a kind of therapeutic refuge,” the Beacon reported.
“Asked when they first ‘learned about race,’ one parent recalled how, while she was in kindergarten, a black classmate had been expelled for bringing a knife to school. Later in the session, she expressed relief that there had been no minorities around to hear such a traumatizing tale,” according to the paper.
“I was so grateful that there weren’t, you know, people of color in this space to hear me say [that] my first experience learning about what my race was was a black boy with a knife. That can be harming,” the woman said.
Listen:
The first workshop reportedly contained a dozen parents, ran for two hours, and began with attendees listening to a rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “All You Fascists Bound to Lose” reportedly performed by the “Resistance Revival Chorus.”
The Beacon notes that the so-called “Resistance Revival Chorus” is comprised of women and “non-binary singers.”
“After participants shared their pronouns—most of which were “she/her”—facilitators performed a brief land acknowledgment and laid out the ground rules for the session,” according to the Beacon.
“In what seemed like an effort at self-awareness, another facilitator, Courtney Epton, told participants to avoid virtue-signaling. ‘Trying to compete with each other to be the good white person’ she said, is itself a ‘part of white supremacy,’” the paper reported.
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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