Bahar Mustafa's Racism Controversy

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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 herself by claiming 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.

Criminal Charge

On October 6th, 2015, The Guardian^[8] reported that Mustafa had been charged with "sending a threatening communication" for tweeting the hashtag "#killalllwhitemen" and was set to appear in court the following month. That day, several posts about the charge reached the front page of Reddit, where many noted that the United Kingdom did not have the kind of free speech protections available in the United States. Meanwhile, the conservative news site Breitbart^[7] published an article titled "Bahar Mustafa Should Never Have Been Arrested For Tweeting" by staff writer Milo Yiannopoulos, which criticized Mustafa's arrest as an affront to freedom of speech. On October 7th, The Escapist Forums member Fallow submitted a thread about the charges. In the coming days, many Twitter users used the hashtag #IStandWithBaharMustafa^[9] in protest of the charges, including those who had previously criticized Mustafa's statements (shown below).