A cached version of Pat Brown’s controversial meetup.

/ Screenshot via Meetup

The post on Meetup seemed destined for an uproar: a “White Women Yoga Meetup” that promised “to allow space for White women to gather in the name of yoga, surrounded by the supportive community of White people, White yoga instructors, and all around safe White spaces.” And indeed, local criminal profiler Pat Brown was courting controversy when she started the page.

Now, Brown claims that her event was actually a stunt designed to prove the existence of discrimination on websites like Meetup (which allow people to gather with one another based on shared interests), while simultaneously swearing that the gambit is not at all political.

Brown, a Bowie, Md. resident who has appeared on cable news to discuss criminal profiling and wrote a book about the murder of Cleopatra, had a feeling her hoax might seize attention. Despite having a blog post that calls the media “the biggest hate group in America,” she set up a voicemail that told media about her interview availability. News outlets from as far-flung places as Australia covered her gambit after it was pilloried on social media. It took nine minutes from the time DCist sent her an email before she called.

“This is just hitting the news cycle in the last couple of days,” she says. “My hope is that people will start discussing it and they’ll say, ‘maybe there’s a point here.'”

Brown actually created three Meetup groups: White Women Yoga, Caucasian Camera Buffs, and White Women Walkers. She says she did so after being rejected from a number of groups on the site intended specifically for black women. While many Meetup groups, including those geared towards people of color, are public, some require that people request to join the group, and proffer a photo and an explanation for why they want to join. Brown is convinced that she was rejected from the events for black women because her photo shows a white woman, though she doesn’t have proof that’s why.

Meetup allowed for the formation of Brown’s groups (she says she would have sued if the company hadn’t) but the online outcry, particularly to White Women Yoga, was swift:

A white woman, Brown married a black man in 1979 (they’ve been divorced for 14 years) and raised two biracial children and one black son. She says her concern over Meetup groups targeting one racial group stems from worry that her own kids could ultimately be forced to choose parts of their identity. As she writes in a blog post that includes photos of Richard and Mildred Loving, as well as a picture of herself in India, “What would happen to my 3/4 White, 1/4 Black granddaughter? Would she not be allowed to join a group with women who look like her mother, relatives and friends?”

When we asked her how her children have responded to her blog post, she declined to answer. “I don’t bring that up with you all because that’s our business,” Brown says. “This was my decision to bring this issue to light.”

D.C.’s yoga community is already overwhelmingly white, and black practitioners have had to work hard to create spaces where they feel comfortable and welcomed.

That’s a huge part of why Brandon Copeland, co-founder of Khepera Wellness, decided to create an experience specifically for black attendees. “I felt it was important that we weren’t trying to be a catchall for other people’s issues, but that we focus specifically on the black community,” he told DCist in 2017. People of any race are invited to join. “We want you to come—we are just unapologetic about our support of the black community and black people.”

Brown says that she doesn’t necessarily have a problem with people deciding to purposefully spend time with people who share their experiences or racial background. She said her issue is that Meetup, a business, “is providing a platform for segregation.”

While Brown declined to say which politicians she backs, she describes her “personal conservative political biases” in one blog post and describes the attendees at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville as “alt-right folk [that] had a permit and some possibly legitimate points.”

“I don’t really want to put politics in this,” Brown tells DCist, in the same interview where she says that the Black Lives Matter movement created “a lot of anger and rage.”

The three posts Brown was hosting are no longer available on the event website. “Meetup takes the integrity and safety of our community very seriously,” the company said in a statement provided to media outlets. “We expect that every Meetup group follow our Community Guidelines. This group was removed when we determined it did not adhere to these policies.”

But Brown isn’t particularly perturbed about that, because she never really wanted to hold the events. What she wanted—and what she got—was the uproar.

Filed Under: meetup, yoga,