UGA Teaching Assistant: “Some White People May Have to Die” for Blacks to Advance


University of Georgia graduate student and teaching assistant Irami Osei-Frampong is under fire for making statements on social media that  “Some white people may have to die for black communities to be made whole in this struggle to advance to freedom.”

In a follow-up post on his own Facebook page after Campus Reform published his comment and the backlash was swift, he wrote, “The idea that some White people may have to die for freedom isn’t particularly shocking. We have a standing army and an armed domestic police force. I think what’s offensive is the notion that some White people may have to die for Black people to be free. It’s as if White cultural entitlement along racial lines isn’t shot through with the threat of violence and reprisal. The fear of unchecked White violence is always in the room. And it isn’t necessarily physical violence.

The comments on his Facebook page are not unpredictable. Some just call his comments with reasoned and calm rebuttal. Others threaten outright violence as a counter to the violence they allege he has threatened in his comments.

Osei-Frimpong continued to address the original post and expanded on his position. And brought up Heather Heyer, the woman run down and killed at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017.

“Heather Heyer died for going to a rally against White supremacists. She didn’t wake up that day to die. She woke up that day to go to a rally against White supremacy. But she paid the price. That’s simply what justice costs. Our unwillingness to pay that price is why we ended Reconstruction.”

And he has doubled-down on his original comment and in response to people angry says, “I’m starting to realize that when people say non-violent, they mean, ‘I don’t want to do anything that may make the oppressor or the oppressed violent.’”

The University of Georgia issued a statement that it’s looking into legal options.

 



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