Webster University, located outside St. Louis, is considering a segregated safe space for white students to talk about their racism and white privilege.
The school’s new chief diversity officer says they may create a whites-only safe space for Caucasian students. In the segregated space, students would talk about their white privilege and work out their inner racism.
Chief Diversity Officer Vincent Flewellen got the idea for the new program from the book Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk About Race and How to Do It. He organized the program at Washington University when he was director of equity and inclusion there.
The Young Women’s Christian Association of Metro St. Louis has a “Witnessing Whiteness” program as well.
If implemented at Webster University, the workshop wouldn’t launch before August.
“I have not had an opportunity to fully explore the possibility. Should we move to bring the program onto campus, it would not be before August of this year,” Flewellen said, according to Webster University’s student newspaper, the Webster Journal.
Some of the reasons behind the Witnessing Whiteness forum are: “people of color shouldn’t always have to be the ones to educate white people about racism and oppression,” “white people need to unlearn racism,” and “it’s a place where white people can begin to build a new culture of white anti-racism.”
In 2018, Flewellen gave an interview to NBC where he said that he wants white people to stop calling the police on black people “just because they’re gathering in a park.” Additionally, he said he hopes white people who participate in the program will “find their voice and are able to speak to, call out and stand up against racism.”
Mary Ferguson, a former Webster professor who is now racial justice director at the YWCA Metro St. Louis location, explained the rationale behind the whites-only rule: “White people would not be as forthcoming if they were in a mixed group. They would not do as deep a learning because they would be afraid of being called racist and offending someone.”
Alexander James is a contributor to Red Alert Politics and a freelance journalist.
