University of Michigan-Dearborn issued an apology Wednesday for creating segregated online student “cafes”, one for white people and another for people of colour.

A statement by the university near Detroit came after two virtual “cafe” events were held Tuesday, with one advertised as a “non-POC Cafe” for non-people of colour to “gather and discuss their experience as students on campus and as non-POC in the world”.

The other, dubbed “BIOPIC Cafe” was for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour, and described as a space for “marginalised racial/ethnic/cultural communities to gather and to relate with one another to discuss their experience as students on campus” and in the world. UM-Dearborn apologised for referring to the online gatherings as “cafes”.