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"OK to Be White" Signs a "Sign of the Times"?

"OK to Be White" Signs a "Sign of the Times"?
11/7/2017
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Susan Dutca-Lovell

"It's okay to be white" signs were scattered on college campuses across the country, as well as in Canada over the past week. Reportedly, the signs were first suggested on an online chat forum called 4chan, calling on people to place posters in their area on Halloween night. At Harvard Law School, at least 20 handmade stickers with the message "It's ok to be white" were posted on light poles and electrical boxes. Harvard Law's Dean of Students Marcia Sells condemned the posters, stating the posters and stickers are "intended to divide us from one another" and that "HLS will not let that happen here." The Department of Public Works removed the stickers shortly thereafter. Even after they had been removed, the message continued to circulate via social media through hashtags and videos, gaining both condemnation and support.

According to a report on WUSA9 TV, the message represented "a concentrated effort to foment racial and political tension." Media Matters attacked Fox News Tucker Carlson for "suggesting that the hysteria over the 'OK to be white' postings was wrong-headed." According to the Washington Post, "...the episode is indicative of the efforts white-nationalist groups have made to recruit in and around the nation's college campuses and other mainstream settings with claims of growing white maltreatment and expanding anti-white discrimination."

The posters have also been spotted in Rocky River, Ohio; at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota; at Tulane University in New Orleans; at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland.; around college campuses in Cambridge, Massachusetts (including Harvard Yard); and at the University of Alberta in Canada.

In your opinion, were these signs inappropriate and/or divisive? Why or why not?

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