"I can't be racist because I am an ethnic minority woman" says University nut

[-:Undertaker:-]

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/londo...-10243202.html

'I can't be racist because I'm an ethnic minority woman', says Goldsmiths university diversity officer embroiled in racism row'

Banned white people: Bahar Mustafa (Picture: Facebook)

A student union officer who banned white people and men from an event promoting equality has claimed she "cannot be racist" because she is an ethnic minority woman. Goldsmiths University's student union welfare and diversity officer Bahar Mustafa sparked a backlash when she told white people and men they should not attend an event on "diversifying the curriculum".

She wrote on Facebook: “Invite loads of BME Women and non-binary people!! Also, if you’ve been invited and you’re a man and/or white PLEASE DON’T COME just cos I invited a bunch of people and hope you will be responsible enough to respect this is a BME Women and non-binary event only.” Her comments were branded "laughable" and "patronising" by fellow students. And Goldsmiths University said it had written to the union to "express concern" at the comments, and added: "We are proud of our diverse community and do not tolerate any form of oppression, including racism, sexism or any other form of bigotry.”

But Ms Mustafa, 27, has hit back in the row, describing the backlash over her Facebook post as "only one in a series of attacks upon minority women on campus.” In a statement read out to fellow students, she accused the media of embarking on a "witch hunt and shameful character assassination". She said: "There have been charges laid against me that I am racist and sexist towards white men.

"I, an ethnic minority woman, cannot be racist or sexist towards white men, because racism and sexism describe structures of privilege based on race and gender. "Therefore, women of colour and minority genders cannot be racist or sexist, since we do not stand to benefit from such a system.” In a seven-minute statement, she also accused people who "benefit from white supremacy" of "clinging on" to power and added: "We are not going down without as fight." She said: "Reverse racism and reverse sexism are not real.

"We will not be silenced; we are militant. The world is not ready for minorities to challenge the status quo, but resistance to our resistance is futile." Her speech drew applause from a crowd of students gathered at an event at Goldsmith's in New Cross last week. The student's union had previously said it was reviewing how it communicates with people to "avoid any future misunderstandings" after the backlash over Ms Mustafa's comments ahead of the scheduled event in April. It added: “Challenging societal inequality has been at the core of our campaigns and we try to do this pro-actively in our everyday work, so the accusation that we discriminate is one we refute wholeheartedly.”

One of the reasons I hated university, although far from a main reason, was the existence of stuff like diversity officers, gay officers, women's officers yada yada you know the rest. You know, university is always portrayed isn't it to be like a place full of ideas and open minded yet I found it a number of times to be one of the most narrow minded experiences of my life: i've sat through and argued with a lecturer (a supposed clever man) tell me that Saudi Arabian culture is equal to British culture despite declaring himself a liberal which he'd have his head lopped off for if he was there to peddle his ********, i've sat through a member of the Yorkshire Police come in and tell us to report anyone saying anything 'homophobic' to them which is the very definition of thought police and we've had the Sun newspaper banned on campus for page 3 meanwhile the Guardian - which gives a platform to Jew haters, terror sponsors and pedophile advocates - a free ride. It's a world upside down.

In this case she's obviously a nut and need to pull her head out of the Guardian and turn off her tumblr account.

Thoughts?

[Empired]

She's insane lol! That's why I can't stand all those #____Privilege pages on tumblr; one that first comes to mind is Thin Privilege.

Makes me so frustrated that people feel the need to blame those who have it better than them in society rather than just focus on trying to make things better for themselves. The thing that gets me is when you watch Children In Need or Comic Relief and you see all those people living in poverty out in Africa and South America or some parts of Asia, they're not yelling about how selfish and greedy we all are but they're thanking us for donating something as insignificant (to us) as £1.

Seems to me like if you have ANY sort of privilege (so basically anyone that lives in the western world) you seem incapable of being able to see it and are just angry that your life isn't absolute perfection, but if you have absolutely no privilege and live in a world of complete poverty where it's a miracle if you make it through the night you're grateful for absolutely anything you can get.

When I think about that it makes me ashamed to have the things I've got.

[-:Undertaker:-]

@Empired;

I take issue with the use of the word privilege in all these discussions.

a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.

To me a privilege sounds as though you have something that you are undeserving of or rather didn't earn through merit in the first place - or as the above says, something that it only for a select group which excludes others. Wealth and everything we've built in western civilisations could be done by those in Africa, Asia and so on as there's nothing stopping them. We evil white westerners have built our own societies up from nothing and everything in them for hundreds of years, thanks to our own merit and not through accident or the work and brains of others.

I'm white, thin and a westerner. And I don't owe jack to you if you are coloured, fat or from a backwards civilisation.

[Empired]

@Empired;

I take issue with the use of the word privilege in all these discussions.



To me a privilege sounds as though you have something that you are undeserving of or rather didn't earn through merit in the first place - or as the above says, something that it only for a select group which excludes others. Wealth and everything we've built in western civilisations could be done by those in Africa, Asia and so on as there's nothing stopping them. We evil white westerners have built our own societies up from nothing and everything in them for hundreds of years, thanks to our own merit and not through accident or the work and brains of others.

I'm white, thin and a westerner. And I don't owe jack to you if you are coloured, fat or from a backwards civilisation.

But we built up our own societies at the cost of others. We chased out the Native Americans, we killed off the Aztecs, we exploited those in poorer societies who had a choice between being paid peanuts and being paid nothing.

I don't see why I should owe anything to anyone who lives in the same society as me but somehow sees their situation to be unfair, but I believe I'm part of the society that is partly to blame for the poverty of Third World countries and I'd like to help. If you don't, then don't do anything. Simple as.

[-:Undertaker:-]

But we built up our own societies at the cost of others.

Economically false.

Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Prussia and other European nations improved both their own standard of living for the vast majority and also did so in their colonial outposts. There's the false economic myth that for every trade that takes place, there's a winner and a loser. It was not and is not true.

We chased out the Native Americans

Actually native Americans often sided with the British hence why loads of tribes moved to British North America (Canada).

we killed off the Aztecs

We didn't.

It was the Spanish who did, and the Spanish actually sided with other tribes/civilisations in South America to overthrow the Aztecs who had previously tried dominating the other tribes in the area hence why they were so hated and overthrown by allies of the Spanish.

The same can be said of the British experience with the Zulu's in southern Africa who were colonialists long before the Dutch+British arrived in the area.

I don't see why I should owe anything to anyone who lives in the same society as me but somehow sees their situation to be unfair, but I believe I'm part of the society that is partly to blame for the poverty of Third World countries and I'd like to help. If you don't, then don't do anything. Simple as.

Why are western countries to blame for the poverty for third world countries?

Can you provide some evidence that these countries or civilisations were any wealthier than they are now, even with the disaster of the imperial age ending has had? By all accounts on a moral and social scale, the colonial era wasn't always perfect but in terms of pure economics I am afraid you are deluding yourself because the economic story clearly shows the imperial era to have been an age of progress for the non-colonial countries.

And here's the hard evidence to prove these countries aren't poor because of their former colonial masters: Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Chile, Taiwan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Persia and mainland China have all done well after independence despite many of them being colonial outposts not long ago. Indeed, if you look at the examples given there, many of them are actually countries without any vast natural resources yet they've still managed to outperform the vast majority of fomer colonial states - especially those in Africa.

They can do it on their own as the above have proven. So there's no excuses for the failures that somehow it's all our fault and not their own.

[Empired]

Then let's agree to disagree. This isn't in Debates and I'm not here to make you change your mind.

[-:Undertaker:-]

Then let's agree to disagree. This isn't in Debates and I'm not here to make you change your mind.

All i'm saying is don't buy into the self-hating western crap that comes from tumblr. that's all.

[Empired]

All i'm saying is don't buy into the self-hating western crap that comes from tumblr. that's all.

I think that's only half the problem. On tumblr they seem to take the line "I hate myself and it's your fault because *insert meaningless reason here*" which is a pretty ridiculous way of thinking.

[GommeInc]

She's not racist. No. She's a sexist, racist idiot who believes in the whole "safe space" idea, which is just a dangerous way of saying "we believe in consensual segregation of ourselves and don't believe in equality or fairness". If you really want to stamp out inequality, you integrate with your fellow human beings with disregard to creed, background, colour or gender. If you want to set up separate groups and purposefully discourage others from attending purely because they have a penis or are white, then you deserve the harsh comments as you are no better than the people you apparently despise. Saying people are privileged because they are white and/or have a penis (usually both) isn't privilege, unless we're in 1915 and haven't moved on from such stupid comments and attitudes. Now it's coming from noisy "minorities".

Thankfully the girl at my Uni who was in that position quit, after months of ignorance. She called me a privileged white male because I told her she was lazy for petitioning bans on debates which involved interesting topics such as "does pornography degrade women" and "Should the UK leave the EU" with a UKIP MEP in attendance. If she can't be bothered to support minorities by voicing her claims in these debates she shouldn't be involved in politics. Same for many SUs across the country. Universities, or rather SUs at Universities, seem to prefer lazy activism (or inactivism) where boycotts are the new form of protest, instead of debate and reason. And these are institutes that are there to expand the mind, yet people like the girl in this story and at my University have the smallest pea brains known in existence.

/rant

[FlyingJesus]

This has been going round on tumblr this week and it's frustrating to see how many people blindly agree with her stance and attempt to change definitions to include the word "institutionalised" as though it's somehow not as bad when a white male gets stabbed in the face because he is slightly more likely to have been asked a question in class. The idea that one cannot be racist because of the circumstances of their birth is itself racist, and it takes a special kind of stupid to ignore reality that hard in order to excuse your own selfishness.

People like this don't want equality, they want perpetual victimhood as a soapbox and a free leg up for imagined hardships