A prestigious Scottish university arranged an event titled “Resisting Whiteness” where white people were to be banned from speaking.
“Resisting Whiteness”, which bills itself as a QTPOC (Queer and Trans People of Colour) outfit, according to The Telegraph, also planned to set up two so-called “safe spaces” at the University of Edinburgh event — and intended to ban white people from one of them.
“We will… not be giving the microphone to white people during the Q&As, not because we don’t think white people have anything to offer to the discussion, but because we want to amplify the voices of people of colour,” explained a primer for the event.
“If you are a white person with a question, please share it with a member of the committee or our speakers after the panel discussion.”
Jane McColl, described by The Telegraph as an “anti-racism campaigner”, complained that the “blatant racism” was a retrograde step.
“It sets back the battle to achieve equality and fairness by decades, all because of the actions of a tiny group of extremists, whose perverse sense of logic has led them to belittle white people, not by who they are as individuals, by merely because of their skin colour,” she explained.
“Imagine if this event was called ‘Resisting Blackness’ and non-white people were told they could not ask questions, nor access a room because they were the ‘wrong’ colour.”
The University of Edinburgh is said to have “expressed our concerns to them about certain aspects of the format of the event” to the organisers, and that they had backed down on having a no-whites “safe space” as a result — but they did not say whether the decision to ban white people from speaking was reversed.
But the event in the Scottish capital does not appear to be a one-off, with the National Union of Students (NUS) having sold tickets for another ‘Resisting Whiteness’ in Septemeber 2018, according to their social media.
Other social media output from the so-called union references to “anti-fascism workshop[s]”, “decolonising education”, “institutional racism“, claims that “sharing culture… must be coupled with discussions of systemic racism“.