Black student hangs Jim Crow-like restroom signs to protest 'white privilege'
An art student at University at Buffalo admitted to hanging "whites only" and "blacks only" signs outside the restrooms at her school in order to make a point about white privilege.
An art student at University at Buffalo admitted to hanging “whites only” and “blacks only” signs outside the restrooms at her school in order to make a point about white privilege.
“I am in pain,” Ashley Powell wrote in a Facebook post explaining why she chose to hang the signs. “My art practice is a remnant of my suffering. White privilege and compliance only exacerbate my symptoms.”
Although Powell, a graduate art student, said that she was not necessarily trying to conduct a “social experiment,” she did say that she hung the signs to watch and see what people’s reactions to them would be.
“Today these signs may no longer exist, but the system that they once reinforced still does,” she wrote. “Any white person who would walk past these signs without ripping them down shows a disturbing compliance with this system.”
But the signs dredged up feelings of anger as well as massive controversy.
“It brought up feelings of the past of a past that our generation has never seen which I think is why it was so shocking for us to see,” said Micah Oliver, president for the Black Student Union.
“There was fear expressed, anger, disappointment — all of that,” Oliver added.
