The largest Catholic university in the U.S. shared a video on its YouTube page where alumna and Nevada State College professor Erika Abad found a racial divide in just about everything, including the idea that something as basic as “how we eat our chicken” is racialized.
DePaul University Office of Alumni Relations YouTube channel hosts a “Perspectives on Racial Justice” series that “seeks to further DePaul University’s commitment to ending racial injustice on campus and in our community.” The stated purpose of this series presented by a coalition of faculty and university alumni is to “bring awareness to racial inequalities, continue the dialogue on issues of race and ethnicity and support our communities of color.”
The videos were first noted by Campus Reform. One recent entry from mid-February explored “how colorism is manifested within communities of color and how these communities can work together focusing on shared struggles and ally-ship to combat colorism.”
“Colorism” as described by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is the “prejudice or discrimination especially within a racial or ethnic group favoring people with lighter skin over those with darker skin.”
The presentation was uploaded to the DePaul University Office of Alumni Relations YouTube channel.
Abad said that “colorsim” can be explained through five points, dubbed the “sense(s) of colorism:” sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.
On the topic of sight, she referenced hair style and products, arguing that using coconut-based and scented products is about assimilating to “whiteness.”
Then, answering a question posed to her during the live stream, she said that “how [people of color] eat [their] chicken” is also about “whiteness,” but did not explain the details.
Doubling down, Abad said tanning has been racially “sexualized in a certain way,” making reference to “Ariana Grande … performing brown face in terms of her aesthetic.”
Abad said that, in the instance of Grande, brown face is acceptable due to her being “an Italian American.” She added, however, that “if folks who are organically and naturally darker or have textured hair, live in that comfortably, they are often perceived socially as less-than.”
DePaul’s Alumni Youtube channel also includes other videos on “Afro-Latinx Identity & Inclusivity” and “Queer and Trans Intersections with Disability Justice.”
Fox News Digital reached out to DePaul University for comment but did not hear back.