Goldsmiths Diversity Officer in Race Row
Jonathan Masters is on the case as officer lands herself in hot water
A petition has been launched to remove Bahara Mustafa, the current Diversity officer for Goldsmiths University, from her position following a recent tweet featuring the inflammatory hashtag “Kill all white men”.
This follows a long line of controversies from Ms Mustafa, the first of which saw her banning certain people from an event that sought opinions on diversifying the Goldsmiths curriculum. Ms Mustafa posted on the page for the event on Facebook: “Invite loads of BME [Black and Minority Ethnic] Women and non-binary people!! Also, if you’ve been invited and you’re a man and/ or white PLEASE DON’T COME just cos i invited a bunch of people and hope you will be responsible enough to respect this is a BME Women and non-binary event only [sic]”. The comment resulted in outrage, with the student community at Goldsmiths calling it “laughable” and “patronising beyond belief”.Event organisers later deleted the post and attempted to mitigate with the comment “Allies now welcome!” posted on the Facebook page.
Goldsmiths University were quick to react, stating that “We are proud of our diverse community and do not tolerate any form of oppression, including racism, sexism or any other form of bigotry.”
The Student Union added, “Challenging societal inequality has been at the core of our campaigns and we try to do this pro-actively in our everyday work, so the accusation that we discriminate is one we refute wholeheartedly”.
Ms Mustafa hit back at claims by commenters that her posts had a racist and sexist undertone by refuting the possibility of these structures existing: “I, an ethnic minority woman, cannot be racist or sexist towards white men, because racism and sexism describe structures of privilege based on race and gender.
“Therefore, women of colour and minority genders cannot be racist or sexist, since we do not stand to benefit from such a system”.
She added “Reverse racism and reverse sexism are not real”.
At the time of writing, the petition to expel Ms Mustafa from her position has amassed just over 17,500 signatures, with the petition citing various acts such as the use of the official Union Twitter account to tweet using the hashtag “white trash”, claiming that it violates several of the Union’s policies when it comes to bigotry and discrimination.
However, in recent days there have been a number of supporters taking to Twitter to defend Ms Mustafa by using the hashtag “#supportbaharmustafa”.
Elle Baeker tweeted her support in stating that it was “not reverse racism to create safe spaces for BME women” and arguing that the the question shouldn’t be “why were white people & men excluded?” but instead “why are safe spaces needed?”.
