Off-campus UC Berkeley, California, housing for students has a person of color (POC) themed house where it boasts of inclusiveness and a safe environment for all types of people – unless you happen to be white. An image of the rules posted on Reddit shows the regulations include banning whites from the common areas -- including parents or other family members who come to visit.
According to the posted rules, house requirements include making sure non-white students feel comfortable and at ease. “[M]any POC moved here to be able to avoid white violence and presence, so respect their decision of avoidance if you bring white guests.” And then it further stated: “white guests are not allowed in common spaces,” and “Always announce guests in Guest Chat if they are in common spaces and they are white.”
Is Banning Whites Racist?
The house is a five-story building with 30 rooms, housing up to 56 students, and owned by a private landlord – not the university. As part of the Berkeley Student Cooperative, the program’s mission was to bring affordable housing to students in the area and “aims to provide housing to low-income, first-generation, immigrant and marginalized students of color.”
Stephen Ross is the cooperative experience manager for the Berkeley Student Cooperative and said the rules of the POC house are not “official policy.” He explained that while “[w]hite people can and do live in POC house,” the focus is more about providing support for people of color. He added that the residents work on “not making Whiteness central to the experience for members living in the house” because of how some have been traumatized by “white violence,” although exactly what white violence consists of was not defined.
Janet Gilmore, senior director of strategic communications at UC Berkeley, told the Daily Mail that while “Cal Housing Theme Programs do not discriminate on the basis of race, consistent with UC and campus policy,” since this house is privately owned, “the campus has no ability under the Code of Student Conduct to discipline the landlord.”
What about biracial students, you might ask? One person who commented on Reddit stated they were a former house member and that their “presence as a light-skinned person was not received well,” and “[I] was not allowed to let my dad enter the house because he’s white.”
Image from Reddit public forum
Reverse Racism?
One can only imagine if this was housing for white people and anyone not white was banned from common areas and made to feel like a pariah?
Kendall Qualls, a former Republican mayoral candidate for Minnesota, said the POC’s house rules are “unamerican.” Qualls, who is a black woman, said:
“It’s just repugnant. You think about discrimination that we faced in this country back in the 50s and 60s, it was wrong then. It’s wrong now regardless of who is the victim it’s wrong. And we shouldn’t stand for it as a country.”
Berkeley student Manduhai Baatar said the house has a history of being racist and discriminatory. She said the house has been “plagued by ‘white supremacy,’ neglectful students who have left the house ‘uninhabitable,’ and gained a reputation for ‘call out culture’ and drug use,” according to the Daily Mail report. She further wrote:
“Several members have been criticized for being white/white passing, aligning themselves with whiteness, or allowing white violence in the house. Thus, many members (and their guests) have both explicitly and implicitly uplifted white supremacy, misogyny, queer/transphobia, anti-Blackness, classism, and colorism in the space.
“Conflict also often arises from the various identities and perspectives brought into the house, thus failing the house’s third and final pillar of cross-cultural exchange."
When it comes to racism and discrimination, when organizations, schools, jobs, etc., can get away with banning whites, then it sends the message that there can only be racism against people of color because discriminating against whites is okay.
