Anti-black posters on University of Michigan campus warn white women not to date black men

You're supposed to go to college to get more knowledge — but these posters are nothing but ignorant. 

The Black Student Union and others at the University of Michigan shared two images on their social media accounts Monday morning depicting anti-black flyers seen circulating around campus. 

One was titled "Why White Women Shouldn't Date Black Men," while the other featured a call for European Americans to "stop apologizing" and "living in fear."

"White people have the right to exist," reads the second poster.

The flyer advocating that white women stay away from black men lists reasons like, "Your kids probably wouldn't be smart" and "you should probably just avoid black men."

It goes on to highlight stories about black men who have killed white women, claiming that relationships between black men and white women "[start] with brutal rape, then get much worse." 

Unsurprisingly, the "facts" presented here are dubious at best, and incorrect or violently stripped of context to feed long-running fears of black men pursuing romantic relationships with white women, at worst. 

For the latter, here's a quick fact-check that any person with Google access could do: 

The claim that black people are naturally less intelligent is one of the oldest in the book. There's a long history of white researchers trying to prove the diminished mental capacities of black men, including measuring their skulls in the 19th century to "prove" their alleged lack of brain capacity. 

These pseudo-scientific metrics have since been routinely debunked by actual scientists. Meanwhile, the answers to educational achievement gaps between blacks and whites lie overwhelmingly in the American education system's persistent segregation, and that majority-black schools are often vastly under-resourced and underfunded.

And while the poster points to specific instances of black men killing white women, it ignores that such crimes are strikingly uncommon — the vast majority of murders, regardless of the race or gender of the perpetrator, are committed within that person's racial group.

Those are just two of the lies expressed in the posters. But the real issue is not just their flagrant dishonesty — it's that they use dubious and persistently disproven statistics to mask their real goal, which is to stoke the same tired, age-old white supremacist fears of this particular interracial union that have lasted since slavery.

The University of Michigan has since released a statement condemning the posters' "racist point of view" and said they'd been removed.

"Messages of racial, ethnic or religious discrimination have no place at the University of Michigan," the statement reads. "Targeted attacks against groups of people serve only to tear apart our university community." 

The statement continues: 

"While we continue to defend any individual's right to free speech on our campus, these types of attacks directed toward any individual or group, based on a belief or characteristic, are inconsistent with the university's values of respect, civility and equality. We also have a responsibility to create a learning environment that is free of harassment. These are core values and guiding principles that will help us as we strive to live up to our highest ideals." 

The University of Michigan's Black Student Union has not responded to Mic's request for comment.