It's okay to be white

"It's okay to be white" (IOTBW) is an alt-right slogan which originated as part of an organized trolling campaign on the website 4chan's discussion board /pol/ in 2017.

The saying was later spread by neo-Nazi groups and politically organized white supremacists, including former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke and The Daily Stormer.

[7] Many of the flyers were torn down, and some accused the posters of being covertly racist[8][9] and white nationalist,[10] while others, like Jeff Guillory, executive director of Washington State University's Office of Equity and Diversity, argued that it was a nonthreatening statement.

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".

[19][20] 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.

[27] Tucker Carlson on Fox News defended the campaign in a segment entitled "High school Fliers Create Shock and Horror".

[29] 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 overraction, and might give the appearance to the general public that "leftists and journalists hate white people".

[31] 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.

[35] 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".

"[37][38] 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.