“The University of Waterloo is setting aside one hour a week specifically for ‘Black folx’ to swim in the campus pool,” reports The College Fix. Black students interested in taking lessons “will be taught by experienced black swimmers/instructors,” the university says. The University of Waterloo is funded by the taxpayers of Ontario, a Canadian province.
True North reports that the university also offers specific swim times for transgender, non-binary, and 2SLGBTQ+ individuals that exclude other swimmers. The “Trans, Non-Binary, & 2SLGBTQ+” swim time notice warns that “if you are not trans or non-binary, or participating with a someone who is, please respect this space and come at another time when space is open to all users.”True North reports that the University of Waterloo Department of Athletics and Recreation has “embraced” DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion — EDI in Canada) measures. Earlier, the University of Waterloo advertised a science professor job opening limited to only women, trans, non-binary or two-spirit applicants.
In response to a True North question about the racially-exclusive and sexually-exclusive swims, a U. Waterloo spokesperson said there are “21 hours of open recreational swimming that is offered to all members of our community each week.”
Colleges sometimes engage in such discrimination because they believe there legally is no such thing as discrimination against whites. One example is from the University of California at Los Angeles, where its Director of Race and Equity, Johnathan Perkins, claimed that “every white person is racist to some degree”, and falsely claimed that “white people cannot be victims of racism,” and “only white people can impose racist harm.”
Some Canadian judges may feel this way. But the U.S. courts have rejected this idea, outside the context of certain affirmative action policies. Under U.S. civil-rights laws, white people can be victims of racial discrimination, as the courts have ruled many times. Moreover, non-whites have been found guilty of imposing racist harm, and stereotyping whites as racist simply because they are white is considered racially hostile workplace behavior that can lead to civil-rights violations. The Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal to fire white employees because they were white, in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education and in McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co. (1976). Courts have ruled that racial harassment is illegal even when it is committed by blacks against whites, in cases such as Huckabay v. Moore (1998) and Bowen v. Missouri Department of Social Services (2002).
The federal courts have sentenced non-whites to prison for committing violent racial harms — hate crimes — against whites. Those decisions make plain that it is not “only white people” who “can impose racist harm,” as Perkins claims. Courts have ruled that “baseless accusations of racism” made against white employees because they are white can be racial harassment that contributes to a racially hostile work environment in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (See Underwood v. Northport Health Services (1989)).
Yet Perkins advocates racial discrimination against whites, and frequently expresses racial hostility. He tells whites not to wish him a “Happy Juneteenth” because he will “flip tf out” if they do. He says that whites, unlike Blacks, “should NOT be awarded the day off for Juneteenth,” even though that is discriminatory. Perkins says that while “most” people “value community,” “white people do not.” He said on Juneteenth 2023 that he was “Blaming white people, who should ALL be working today, of all damn days.”
