University of Colorado Anti-Racism Event Cancelled Because Organizers Are White
If you’re white, don’t bother trying to protest racism, because that’s just another way in which your white privilege suppresses voices of color.
Case in point: an anti-racism rally planned at the University of Colorado, Boulder, to show solidarity with black activists at the University of Missouri was cancelled because – wait for it – the protest organizers are white.
As Breitbart’s Lee Stranahan reports, the rally was nixed under pressure from the school’s Black Student Alliance, whose co-president Paris Ferribee said, “It’s not anyone that’s being affected telling the story, it’s only white people telling the story.” The rally was planned by students in a CU course called “Whiteness Studies.” That’s right, college students don’t have time to study … dead white males because they’re too busy taking classes in how irredeemably racist white people are.
Ferribee was incensed by white students striving for solidarity against racism:
“That’s a slap in the face and that’s practicing racism, whether they want to believe it or not. They used their white privilege and oppressed voices and stifled voices that are experiencing this every day.”
Once upon a time in the civil rights movement, blacks and whites marched together against racism. Today that’s not possible because all whites are oppressors, “whether they want to believe it or not.” So much for progress in the civil rights movement.
The organizer Azabe Kassa posted an apology on the group’s Facebook page:
On behalf of the Whiteness Studies class, we apologize to the Black student organizations and Black students on the CU campus. We realize that we acted impulsively and should have consulted with BSA, not taking into account their previous efforts. We acknowledge that we should have contacted BSA to see what they were already planning WITH regard to Mizzou. While we understand that this does not excuse our actions, we learned a lesson in proper allyship.
In case you’re not up on your identity politics, “allyship” is a clunky neologism that the race-obsessed like to use to refer to alliances of what they deem to be marginalized groups.
We still hope to work with BSA to support YOUR efforts AND to stand in solidarity with Black students. We intend to follow BSA’s lead, and we have cancelled the rally that we planned for tomorrow. At this time, we intend to leave the event page up as a public forum to draw attention to issues of racism on this campus. This space was not intended to invoke racist comments, however these comments show exactly why we do need to address racism on this campus. If anyone would like this page to be taken down, please contact me. Once again, we sincerely apologize for any offense we have caused, and take full responsibility for our actions.
Stranahan writes that “despite being attacked for her whiteness, several photos of Azabe Kassa posted on her Facebook page reveal that she appears to be what the left refers to as ‘a person of color.’”
Ferribee also demanded from the university “a mandatory undergraduate class on diversity, because students say they don’t feel accepted in their own dorm rooms,” “transparency from the university,” and “more financial aid for students of color.” But hey, don’t get the wrong impression about her. She’s still willing to work with the white advocates she had previously accused of racism:
“Don’t let what happened on Thursday give you the impression that we don’t want to collaborate with white students… When you start thinking, ‘Oh they don’t like me’…it’s not about you. It’s not about me. It’s about the history. We’re trying to break some things down. We can all work together to make change.”
