protest in Portland, Oregon Many of the flyers were torn down, and some accused the posters of being
covertly racist and
white nationalist, while others, like Jeff Guillory, executive director of
Washington State University's Office of Equity and Diversity, argued that it was a nonthreatening statement.
Academia The
University of Regina declared the posters divisive. University President
Vianne Timmons said: "Simply put, these signs have no place at our university." A spokesman for a
Waterloo Region District School Board commented: "Our schools are safe spaces. We want to see them be safe for all of our children, so to see this kind of thing emerge is a worry." After the signs were found at
Washington State University, Phil Weiler, Vice President of University Communications, said: "one could reasonably believe the intention of the signs is to set a sense of fear and intimidation on campus". Executive director of Washington State University's Office of Equity and Diversity responded to the posters by saying: "In my mind, it's a nonthreatening statement", further stating: "Sure, it's OK to be white. It's OK to be African-American. It's OK to be Latino. It's OK to be gay."
Concordia College said that their president was planning a meeting where students could discuss the matter. Police were contacted regarding the flyers being posted at the
University of California, Berkeley. A police department spokesperson said "the signs did not constitute a
hate crime because they did not target a specific race and because no criminal act was committed". In November 2017,
Lucian Wintrich attempted to give a speech titled "It's OK to be White" at the
University of Connecticut as an invited speaker of the school's
Republican club. The speech was protested and came to an end when a protester, employed as the director of career services at
Quinebaug Valley Community College, In December 2017, the charges against Wintrich were dropped, and the woman who took the papers was charged with attempted sixth-degree
larceny and
disorderly conduct. She stated through her attorney she took Wintrich's speech as a form of protest, describing Wintrich's "It's OK to be White" speech as
hateful language.
Media Some media sources reacted in the way the original authors on 4chan had expected.
Tucker Carlson on
Fox News defended the campaign in a segment entitled "High school Fliers Create Shock and Horror". Carlson asked: "What's the correct position? That it's not okay to be white?"
Newsweek writer Michael Hayden said Carlson was helping to spread neo-Nazi propaganda by defending the posters, saying the slogan is being "promoted by
neo-Nazis and
white supremacists."
The Guardian columnist Jason Wilson argued that the modern use of the slogan was intended to be "ostensibly inoffensive", so that responses from those who recognised its racist background would seem like an overreaction, and might give the appearance to the general public that "leftists and journalists hate white people".
Merchandising According to
ThinkProgress, T-shirts with the slogan were put on sale at
Shopify by right-wing provocateur
Milo Yiannopoulos. In May 2019, New Zealand auction site
Trade Me removed the sale of "It's okay to be white" T-shirts sold by manufacturer VJM Publishing amid public backlash. VJM Publishing Vice President Vince McLeod defended the sales on the VJM Publishing company page, stating that "It's okay to be whatever you naturally are." The controversy was widely reported worldwide and was only a couple of months after the white supremacist
Christchurch mosque shootings. In the wake of Trade Me banning the shirt, the seller moved to another New Zealand
online marketplace, AllGoods.
Australian parliament motion On October 15, 2018, right-wing politician
Pauline Hanson proposed an "It's okay to be white" motion in the
Australian Senate intended to acknowledge the "deplorable rise of
anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilization". It was supported by most senators from the governing
Liberal–National Coalition, but was defeated 31–28 by opponents who called it "a racist slogan from the white supremacist movement." The following day, the motion was "recommitted", and this time rejected unanimously by senators in attendance, with its initial supporters in the Liberal–National Coalition saying they had voted for it due to an administrative error. One Nation did not attend the recommital vote.
Community response In 2020, following a spate of such stickers appearing in
Ipswich, England, local residents responded by altering the stickers to read "It's okay to be kind". In a February 2023 poll conducted by
Rasmussen Reports, a polling firm often referred to by conservative media, 72% of 1,000 respondents agreed with the statement "It's okay to be White". Among the 130 black respondents, 53% agreed, while 26% disagreed, and 21% were unsure.
Slate magazine suggested that some negative respondents may have been familiar with the term's links with
white supremacy. The
Dilbert comic strip was dropped by many newspapers after author
Scott Adams, reacting on his podcast to the outcome of this poll, characterised black people as a "
hate group" for not agreeing with the statement and encouraged
white people to "get the hell away from" them. ==See also==