Trent University in Ontario, Canada, is hosting an event entitled “It’s Okay to Be (Against) White(ness)” in response to innocuous flyers that were found on campus and deemed racist.

The Trent Central Student Association is organizing the affair, which will feature a presentation by Dr. Michael Cappello, an assistant professor at the University of Regina.

In the event description, Dr. Cappello is heralded as, “a white settler living and working on Treaty 4 territory, in Regina Saskatchewan. He is an anti-oppressive educator in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. His work over the last 4 years has focused on teaching/learning against colonialism and teaching/learning into reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.“

An explanation of the event’s title, presumably written by one of its organizers, reads as follows:

Hello Trent students,

After receiving some questions regarding the title of this event, we have a short statement that should clarify the intentions of this event for anyone concerned.

This event’s title is based on the ‘It’s ok to be white’ posters that circulated around various Canadian campuses in November of 2017 that sent racist and offensive messages to racialized student groups. These posters were placed strategically, outside the faculty of Native Studies at the U of A, and on the door of the Office of Indigenization at the U of R. These posters had a divisive and offensive message and were revealed to be tied to white nationalist agendas.

This talk, “It’s Okay to be (Against) White(ness)“ by Dr. Cappello is challenging the idea of “whiteness.” Whiteness is an academic term for the ideologies that describe the practices, beliefs, habits and attitudes that enable the unequal distribution of power and privilege based on skin-colour. Whiteness, as an idea, is not about white people as much as the ways that white racialization is socially constructed as dominant, both historically and in the present moment. Understanding the construction of dominance is necessary in order to begin to dismantle those racialized hierarchies that continue to flourish within the systems of our society. Focusing on Whiteness allows us to move away from the narrow, individual framing of racism as personal ignorance, and begin to focus on the systemic ways that these ideas are made normal.

This normalization of Whiteness makes it difficult for students racialized as white to even notice these ideologies; ‘being normal’ and centering the positions of the dominant group as normal requires making these processes invisible. At this event, we are challenging students to begin to notice, understand and resist the powerful ways that Whiteness works.

The comments section, which has been disabled, contains backlash from students and other users – and also a lengthy rebuke from a female professor at Trent, accusing those posting negative comments of “white fragility,” and offering to meet dissenting white students to ‘buy them a coffee’ and educate them about the concepts of white fragility and whiteness.

‘It’s Okay to Be White’ posters and stickers have been popping up at schools and on campuses across the West, sparking outrage with leftist faculty and mainstream media, with Newsweek calling it “neo-Nazi propaganda.”

The intended purpose of highlighting anti-Caucasian reactionary sentiment in response to the completely neutral message, “It’s okay to be white,” has been proven effective, yet again.

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