By Jessica MiroghaniThe New York TimesArt students at the University of Chicago are protesting the president’s election victory with a series of art projects.
They call it the Art-Rights Day, and they have an alternative slogan: #WhitePrivilege.
The art project, titled “Inclusion Is White Privilege,” was inspired by a comment made by Trump during his victory speech at the presidential election: “As a white man, I am not at all qualified to say that I am a racist, I’m not qualified to call myself a fascist, I won’t be called a fascist.”
The project is called “White Privilege: An Anthology of White Art,” and it includes works by artist and activist Yael Shor, whose work focuses on the intersection of racism and white privilege.
White people, said Shor in a statement released Wednesday, “are subjected to racialized, exclusionary, and violent policing, and we’re constantly confronted with the reality that our race is not an immutable characteristic.”
She explained that “our oppression is a legacy of our oppression, and the struggle for inclusion is not simply a struggle to liberate ourselves from oppression, but a struggle for justice for all of us.”
Shor, a professor of art and art history at the university, has previously collaborated with artist Paul Giamatti to produce a series called “In Defense of White Privileges.”
She said the Art Rights Day protests “are an expression of white privilege,” a term used to refer to the status quo of white people in America.
“We have to understand that, as white people, we do not have a natural monopoly on the art of white supremacy,” she told the New York Daily News.
“It’s a very real and very painful truth that is hard to talk about.”
White people are “treated as the ‘other,’ as if they are less than human,” Shor said.
“Our own race is the ‘Other.'”
The project has been embraced by artists across the political spectrum.
The artist and writer Laura Poitras has written a piece called “A Call to Stop White Privileged White Supremacy,” and artist and filmmaker Alex Haley has directed a short film called “Fucking Nazis.”
Shar told the Daily News that she’s hopeful that the Art and Art-rights Day protests will inspire others to take up the cause of white equality.
“The more people come together and raise their voices, the more likely we are to see an end to the white supremacy that we’ve been taught to fear,” she said.
Shor said she hopes that the protests will give people an opportunity to “talk about race in a way that’s safe and doesn’t involve triggering people.”
“I’m not afraid of people speaking out,” she added.
“I want to say ‘no, thank you, thank God.’ “