An Oregon college informed student resident advisers about examples of white supremacy at a recent training session.
Examples included President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
The training session tried to address diversity issues by showing a pyramid that listed examples of “covert” (socially acceptable) and “overt” (socially unacceptable) white supremacy, The College Fix reported Monday. The graphic was downloaded, not created, by Reed College officials and was used for three minutes out of the hour-long session in January.
“Colorblindness,” “English-only Initiatives” and saying “It is just a joke!” along with MAGA were examples of acceptable white supremacy. “The N-Word,” “Racial Slurs” and “Cross Burning” were socially unacceptable examples of white supremacy.
One source, who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, believed the use of the pyramid was meant to target those wearing MAGA gear.
“They’re actually training new RAs to identify and stereotype anyone wearing MAGA hats or t-shirts as ‘covert white supremacists,'” the source said, according to The Fix.
Reed College spokesperson Kevin Myers said the illustration was “provocative” and meant to start a discussion about implicit and explicit biases, The Fix reported.
“This is a way to provoke discussion about what people think is acceptable or unacceptable,” Myers said, according to the report. “It’s actually about tolerance, not about intolerance.”
Reed College made changes to a humanities course syllabus following protests from students who believed the class was too “Eurocentric” in April 2018.
