Is the ability to hold an art exhibit excluding everyone but you a sign that you're oppressed? It was recently, at a tax-funded university.
Youngstown State University (YSU) boasts the 1991-established McDonough Museum of Art. Special events are frequent, and the gallery's webpage lists its previous exhibitions. A glimpse at the Fall 2023 roster reveals a graduation spectacular, a "Short Shorts Festival," and -- at number three on the index -- the following November extravaganza:
Ekphrastic Writing Workshop: #NotWhite Collective
So, for anyone wanting to attend an art show but intolerant of pale producers, Ohio's state institution aimed to please.
And not only could skin-selective supporters enjoy the show; they could -- and can -- utilize NotWhiteCollective.com's "Donate Now" button to ensure its continued success. Also offered on the site is a social-justice explainer:
The #NotWhite collective is a group of 13 women artists whose mission is to use non-individualistic, multi-disciplinary art to make our stories visible as we relate, connect, and belong to the Global Majority.
...
We are bi/multi-racial/cultural, immigrant or descendants of immigrants investigating the many ways we are seen or not seen, how we self-identify and how we seek liberation through sharing space and stories; research and art-making; discussing the history of imperialism and its effect on us, on the whole not-white world. We actively reject colonialism through our non-hierarchical process.
The ladies express "the hybridized and multifaceted aspects of self-defined liberation." Moreover, they "accept cultural fluidity as a means of seeing and being seen" while "declaring their existence, individually and collectively, through [their] voices, bodies and art."
And like collared clerics of wokeness, they're engaging in exorcisms:
We utilize our arts practice singularly and collectively to Excavate Histories, Expose Realities, and Exorcise Oppression.
At YSU, call it a collaboration. The school has issued an official statement about that very thing:
The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) serves the Youngstown State University community as an educational resource enabling students, staff, and faculty to gain a better understanding of what it means to live in a pluralistic society. We promote this understanding through the development of workshops and collaborations.
Inclusion has apparently changed. Substantially, so has oppression. In the past, people who were afflicted, suppressed, and subjugated wouldn't be able to hold an event barring the Powers That Be Bigoted. It's an era of incredible evolution, and the oppressed are braving their beatdown in all-new ways:
Dreadlocked Professor Says White People Aren't Allowed to Have His Hairdo
Professor: Cancer Researchers Should Show Their Faces to Prove They Aren't White
University Has White Students Confess Their Privileges, Such as Not Being Vilified Due to Their Race
'All-Inclusive' University Cultural Center Hosts a BBQ 'Intended' for Everyone but White People
State University's Philanthropy Center Welcomes Half-White Activist Who Says 'F**k White People'
According to Campus Reform, a Google Drive series displays works from the Collective's Youngstown show. One item is a library sign altered to indicate "LieBrary." "Take off your privilege," it reads.
Another entry -- "'acrylic on glass pane" -- bears the same message. Both works come compliments of Dr. Amber Epps, whose website catalogs creations such as: a "Color Blind Person" sign accompanied by eyeglasses cloaked in whiteness (a version of which made the YSU installment); a #Decolonization Station divided into "#WhitesOnly" and "#NotWhites Only;" and two signs announcing, "I will f***ing kill you."
RELATED: Esteemed Medical Journal Prescribes the Cure for America's Racism: Segregation
It's all part of our new war with oppression, in which "I will kill you" can be considered exemplarily inclusive. So can a no-Aryans-accepted affair. It would seem the oppressed are winning, given they're so successfully trumpeting the fact that they're losing. But evidently, their success is steeped in failure. It's a complicated time; and at Youngstown State University recently, tax-paying whites footed the bill for #NotWhites to work it all out. Hopefully, clarity is impending. As for racial and cultural unity, though, we may have to wait awhile.
-ALEX
See more content from me:
Professors Call for a 'War Machine' to Wipe Out Music Ed's Meritocracy — AKA Whiteness
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