BUZZ
The textbook was assigned in an international public relations class, student Kelbie Murphy says
A Christian student at the University of North Georgia says she paid about $100 for an assigned textbook that teaches Christianity is a “white supremacist group.”
However, the university contends she misinterpreted the passage.
In an interview Thursday with Fox News, senior Kelbie Murphy said what she read in the book upset her.
“I don’t want people who don’t know who Jesus is or who don’t know what Christianity is to take this and run with this and see Christians as a U.S.-based white supremacist group,” she said.
The textbook is “International Public Relations: Negotiating Culture, Identity, and Power,” published in 2007 by authors Thomas Gaither of Elon University and Patricia Curtin of the University of Oregon.
Murphy read the section that upset her in a TikTok video she posted in September. The beginning of Chapter 8 states: “An internet search produces the following modifier for identity: corporate, sexual, digital, public, racial, national, brand, and even Christian (a U.S.-based white supremacist group).”
“The way it was worded, it listed several marginalized groups, but then only called Christians to be white supremacists,” Murphy told Fox News. “But the scariest thing is that the book was written in 2007.”
That means students have been reading the passage for almost two decades – yet “it was never questioned,” she said. “I think American academia needs a definite reevaluation, especially in our textbooks, as we can see from my prime example.”
In her TikTok video, Murphy says she “might get canceled” for complaining online about the textbook. Addressing non-Christian college students, she says emphatically that she is “not a white supremacist.”
“Can we cancel these authors?” she asks in the video. “Are we going to cancel me?”
Murphy’s TikTok video amassed nearly 150,000 likes, and prompted the university to respond in a statement to WDUN.
“Recently, questions have been raised about a passage in a course textbook. After fully reviewing the concern, we want to be clear: the reference in question was not describing Christians or Christianity,” the Sept. 17 statement read. “The passage refers to an extremist group that misuses Christian symbols to promote hate.”
Murphy told Fox News that she did receive an apology from her professor for the passage offending her.
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