Texas Tech University has cancelled an anti-racism seminar where students were segregated by race, the school told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Faculty and students were broken up into two groups within the âAllyship and Co-Conspiratorâ session of the âDeeply Rooted Conversationsâ training, Young Americaâs Foundation (YAF) reported based on documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. YAF filed the requests for information in May 2021 after a student told the group about the âanti-racismâ training.
âUpon reviewing materials from the âDeeply Rooted Conversationsâ discussion series, we learned that some of the content does not align with our university values, and we have discontinued this program,â Matt Dewey, a spokesman for Texas Tech University, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In a video of the seminar, Mica Curtis-Wilson, who is no longer employed by Texas Tech, instructed attendees to break off into two groups, the âBIPOC affinity spaceâ and the âAlly affinity space.â
âWe are breaking up into two separate rooms just to facilitate conversationâŠand also to allow those who identify with each other to be able to communicate ways in which we can be better allies in different spaces,â Curtis-Wilson said in the video.
âThe point of this is to be able to identify how we experience these concepts and ideas and deeply listen to others and how they understand these ideas,â she added.
NEW: Through a FOIA request, YAF has uncovered hundreds of documents from an “anti-racism” training at @TexasTech.
For some breakout sessions, students and faculty were segregated by race. Abhorrent. pic.twitter.com/B57mVm6sbT
â YAF (@yaf) September 16, 2021
NEW: Through a FOIA request, YAF has uncovered hundreds of documents from an "anti-racism" training at @TexasTech.
For some breakout sessions, students and faculty were segregated by race. Abhorrent. pic.twitter.com/B57mVm6sbT
— YAF (@yaf) September 16, 2021
Students were also broken into groups based on race during the âUnderstanding White and White Allyshipâ and the âRacial Battle Fatigueâ seminars, YAF reported. The FOIA office at Texas Tech said the latter session was not recorded, but the office provided YAF with PowerPoint slides from the session.
YAF identified an administrator, referred to as JST in internal notes, as Jade Silva Tovar, senior director of the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the university, who came up with the idea to have two different breakout sessions for black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) students and non-BIPOC groups, according to the FOIA documents.
The segregated sessions, once reunited âcould discuss the groups and find comparisons/contrast ⊠Means to segway into white fragility ⊠Also discuss what BIPOC members need from their non-BIPOC allies,â internal documents show.
During the âUnderstanding Whiteness and White Allyshipâ session, âimmigration laws,â âmass incarceration,â âthe war on drugsâ and âlaw enforcement,â were listed as examples of âwhite supremacy,â YAF reported.
The seminar also asked students to consider questions such as âWhen have my racist ideas and actions affected others?â and âHow have I supported racist/antiracist policies and norms?â
âThe program was not part of the sanctioned academic curriculum at Texas Tech University,â Dewey told the DCNF. âIt was a series of strictly voluntary, optional discussions offered as part of a pilot program to students who were interested in participating through the Division of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.â