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NEW YORK, UNITED STATES – 2020/08/22: A view of New York University sign on the campus building. (Photo by John Nacion/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The prestigious New York University is getting the side eye for hosting an anti-racism workshop for white people only, the New York Post reported.
While the workshop description, now unlisted, never mentioned Black people being forbidden from taking the class, days before the workshop, organizers presented a handout entitled “Why a White Space” that listed different reasons for “white-only” discussions, coming from the nonprofit Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere. They argued that white people need spaces to “unlearn racism” without being subjected to minorities and to “undue trauma or pain.”
One of the parents even questioned the seminar, arguing that not including Black people and other people of color seemed “a little counterintuitive.” NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education Justice Research group Associate Director Barbara Gross said it was for their own good. “People of color are dealing with racism all the time,” Gross said, according to Washington Free Beacon. “Like every minute of every day. It’s a harm on top of a harm for them to hear our racist thoughts.”
Lawyers said that’s not how things work. Dan Morenoff, executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, says the workshop “almost certainly” violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act — an act that governs recipients of federal funding for nonprofit schools like New York University (NYU). Another lawyer, Samantha Harris, said running a “whites only” program in the name of social justice is misguided. “I find it inconceivable that the people putting these programs together don’t see the irony,” Harris said.
Source: Black Enterprise
