In a failed attempt to “build support and community” for people of color, staff at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Wash., sent a happy hour invitation to all of the school’s employees explicitly excluding whites.
The event sponsored by a group of “Staff, Faculty and Administrators of Color” was advertised to be a discussion on racism. But the invitation sent in an email to all 300 of the school’s employees last week came with a catch — white people are not welcome.
“If you want to create space for white folks to meet and work on racism, white supremacy, and white privilege to better our campus community and yourselves,” the email read, “please feel free to do just that.”
The plans for the happy hour didn’t last long. Kellie Purce Braseth, the school’s dean of college relations, told KING-TV in Seattle that the group apologized the following day and cancelled the event.
“It was obviously a mistake. It was badly worded,” she said. “If you want to come you should be able to come, because that just makes a richer conversation.”
Students at the school are required to take a diversity course in order to get a degree, KING-TV reported, and some of them were also disappointed with the happy hour’s sentiment. “That’s not diversity. That’s anti what we’re preaching here,” one student told the station.
Although the event has been cancelled, Karama Blackhorn, one of the contributors in the planning the event and forming the email, defended the event’s aim.
“That space is not for white people. That space is for people of color,” she said. Blackhorn, who is the program coordinator for the school’s Diversity and Equity Center, said that looking back she may have worded the invitation differently, but maintained that the conversation on race would’ve been best served in the absence of white people.
(h/t The Daily Caller)
