Flyers with “It’s okay to be white” messages were found all over the University of California, Davis campus last week.
The flyers were on sandwich boards, underneath bridges and on garbage cans. The signs went up in campus cultural safe zones, too.
“There was also one next to the Chicano Latino Resource Center, as well,” said student Ales Lee. “Are you insinuating that people of color are saying it’s bad to be white?”
Lee is on the UC Davis Black Leadership Council. The group called a town hall meeting Friday to discuss the issue and discuss racial tension on campus.
“Whoever is posting these photos, I don’t think they’re realizing how triggering these posters are for people,” says Lee.
The same message was posted on college campuses across the country this past week. Besides UC Davis, UC Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, Concordia and Tulane were all targeted.
The message campaign appears to have started through a social media chat room-intended to spark accusations of racism and embolden a white nationalist movement.
UC Davis Chancellor Gary May wrote an editorial about the flyers in the California Aggie.
“UC Davis has been and should continue to be a focus for wide-open dialogue on an unlimited range of ideas, including those that many find disturbing,” May wrote. “Anonymous fliers, however, are not dialogue.”
So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the flyers.
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