The Black senator who was removed from an Associated Students of Colorado State University session for wearing blackface said he was silenced by not being allowed to speak in his own defense. 

Senator Koby Peters, from the College of Engineering, was removed from the Wednesday night senate session after he arrived wearing a costume depicting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doing blackface, Peters said. A motion to remove Peters passed 29-1-2, and with a vote to the previous question, neither Peters nor or any other senator was able to speak or debate before the vote.

Peters said the costume was meant to highlight the recent reelection of Trudeau, who faces criticism over a newly uncovered photo in which he is doing blackface.

“I was truly hoping, I guess you could say, to open up a dialogue,” Peters said. “Justin Trudeau was just reelected and was endorsed by Barack Obama, and I was trying to bring to light how we’ve allowed this to happen.”

Listen to a prepared statement by Senator Koby Peters here.

The senator who called the motion, Alejandro Benitez, wrote in a statement to The Collegian that Peters’ action was not reflective of ASCSU and countered the organization’s progress in the areas of diversity and inclusivity. 

Peters said he believes most people in the college he represents would agree with the critical intent of the costume. Additionally, he said he doesn’t understand why people would find his costume offensive, as he wanted it to start a conversation. 

“I should have done this earlier,” Peters said. “This was, of course, controversial, but it’s necessary in order to kick-start a movement.”

While Peters said he hoped to incite change with his costume, Benitez wrote that he feels the act served to reverse work done in ASCSU this year.

“As a senator for the College of Engineering and a representative of ASCSU, this is not what we stand for as an organization nor is it the kind of change we want to see on this campus,” Benitez wrote.

A tweet including a video of Peters in the senate chambers before his removal has more than 40,000 views, and Peters said he has been watching the response closely. Peters said many of the responses are jumping to conclusions, and he said he doesn’t understand tweets questioning if he is “Black enough.”

https://twitter.com/jaymfline/status/1189703857267298304

Peters said he is also facing in-person attacks, which he says have been ad hominem and are not furthering the conversation, but are instead divisive.

“I have been accused by other senators of quote unquote ‘c**nary,’ which is a roundabout way of calling me an Uncle Tom and a race traitor,” Peters said. “I’ve not name called; I’ve not attacked anyone, yet this is what I face.”

Identifying as a conservative Black man, Peters said he has felt specifically targeted and silenced in ASCSU senate sessions. He also said he thinks the senate body and the “other spectrum of the ideological scale” doesn’t want to hear from conservative Black men.

Peters said he hopes other Black conservatives will reach out to him following this incident to have conversations on differing ideas. He said he felt the response so far has been hypocritical by people who claim to support inclusivity and reject hate speech.

According to a 2019 article by the AP, early Black actors were required to wear blackface “if they wished to perform for more lucrative white audiences.”

The article cites 19th-century dancer William Henry “Master Juba” Lane, who is considered the most influential performer in his field at the time and is credited with the invention of tap. The article says he was only allowed to perform without blackface once he gained international fame.

“The fact that the whole context is not there and I’ve just been accused of something that I haven’t done … shows where social media is taking us,” Peters said. “For other Blacks to do that, I find that egregious and disheartening that Blacks can not come together and share differences in ideology.”

CSU has seen another blackface incident in the fall semester, in which four white students took a photo wearing black facemasks, with two of them doing a gesture from the “Black Panther” movie. In response to the incident, Peters was one of five senators who voted against a resolution asking the University to hold students who participate in hate speech, including blackface, accountable. 

this is NOT the same as non-black-folks-blackface… just to be clear. This is NOT the same. And if anyone claims it is, they're really just looking for an excuse or justification to be racially insensitive.

Blackface is not the topic to use your whataboutisms on.

— ⚔️ Leeonidas ⚔️ (@_Leeonidas_) October 31, 2019

Peters said there is no relation between his removal from senate and the incident earlier in the semester. He also said the earlier incident was a “blip” in the greater landscape of current cases of blackface.

“I don’t understand why the school and campus goes up in arms over individuals who, in the moment, have no power, but we don’t make a fuss about someone who actually currently is in a position of power,” Peters said.

Campus diversity offices and curriculum experts did not provide comments when contacted for this article.

Ravyn Cullor can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @RCullor99.