Bahar Mustafa's Racism Controversy

Overview

Bahar Mustafa’s Racism Controversy refers to a series of statements by the University of London’s Goldsmith Students’ Union (GSU) diversity officer Bahar Mustafa, which many accused of promoting racism and racial segregation in mid-2015.

Background

On February 4th, 2015, Mustafa posted a status update to Facebook promoting an event for black and minority ethnic (BME) people only (shown below, left). On February 12th, The Spectator^[1] published an article which criticized the event as a type of “racial segregation.” On April 15th, Mustafa published a post to Facebook urging any white men to refrain from attending an event at the University of London for BME women (shown below, right).

Notable Developments

Mustafa’s Response

On May 6th, 2015, the eastlondonlines YouTube channel uploaded a video titled “Goldsmiths Students’ Union officer refutes accusation of racism and sexism,” in which Mustafa defends by saying her status as an “ethnic minority woman” prevents her from being racist or sexist (shown below).

“I, an ethnic minority woman, cannot be racist or sexist toward white men, because racism and sexism describe structures of privilege based on race and gender and therefore women of color and minority genders cannot be racist or sexist since we do not stand to benefit from such a system.”

#SupportBaharMustafa

That day, supporters of Mustafa began tweeting message in her defense with the hashtag “#supportbaharmustafa.” On May 14th, YouTuber Sargon of Akkad uploaded a video criticizing Mustafa (shown below).

On May 20th, the news site Breitbart^[2] published an article titled “Twitter says ‘no’ to hipster racism: #supportbaharmustafa tag taken over”, which highlighted examples of Mustafa’s critics hijacking the hashtag.

Petition for Removal

On May 15th, a petition was created on Change.org^[5] for police to arrest Mustafa for “hate speech and calls for murder,” which gathered upwards of 18,900 supporters in the first week. On May 19th, The Standard^[3] reported that students at the university started a petition^[4] to have Mustafa removed from her post as diversity officer for tweeting the hashtags “#killallwhitemen”, “#misandry” and for calling someone “white trash” while using the official GSU Twitter account. That day, a post linking to the article was submitted to the /r/NotTheOnion^[6] subreddit, which reached over 5,200 votes and 2,700 comments in the first 72 hours. All comments in the post were subsequently purged by moderators.