NYU recently hosted a white person only “anti-racism” workshop for parents with children enrolled in public school.
QUICK FACTS:
- New York University held an “antiracism” workshop recently for white public school parents.
- The all-white seminar, titled “From Integration to Anti-Racism,” cost attendees $360 and gathered six times between February and June.
- Organized by the university’s “School of Education,” the workshop was “designed specifically for white public school parents” striving to become “anti-racist.”
- When a parent questioned why the seminar was to exclude certain minorities from an anti-racism seminar, the associate director of Steinhardt’s Education Justice Research group, Barbara Gross, said it was to “help” people of color.
- “People of color are dealing with racism all the time,” Gross said. “Like every minute of every day. It’s a harm on top of a harm for them to hear our racist thoughts.”
- According to Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, the whites-only workshop “almost certainly violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.”
- “It’s quintessentially illegal,” reiterated Ilya Shapiro, the director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. “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?’”
ATTORNEY SAMANTHA HARRIS ON THE UNIVERSITY HOSTING A “WHITES ONLY” SEMINAR:
“They are literally running a ‘whites only’ program in the interest of so-called social justice,” Harris said. “I find it inconceivable that the people putting these programs together don’t see the irony.”
BACKGROUND:
- In August 2022, the University of California system developed a job performance review that supervisors could use to foster “anti-racism learning and reflection” among employees.
- The review provided 10 anti-racist principles and practices with a 1 to 5 scale that people could toggle from that ranges from “resists” on one end to “champions” on the other.
- The review sought to establish “guiding anti-racism principles and practices that can be applied uniformly across the UC system by leaders, supervisors and managers to better communicate and carry out anti-racist core values and cultivate a climate of belonging for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) staff members,” the system’s website states.
- Part of the goal, according to the university system, was to help employees become people who “Champions Anti-Racist Practices.”
- The document provided descriptions of several practices embraced by such champions, such as “actively promotes staff development regarding anti-racist communication” and “advocates for protocols that enhance achievement of racial diversity goals.”
