Dear Colleagues:
As the academic year comes to a close for many of us and we ponder our summer plans in the midst of a pandemic, our Black and African American students, practitioners, and faculty on our college campuses have to navigate the continued reality of the on-going violence and murder of Black people in America. Over the past few weeks anti-Black racism in our society has been showing itself in particularly public and deadly ways with the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. As educators, we are keenly aware of how the weight of this violence is disproportionately affecting our Black students, staff, and faculty. We hope that non-Black members on this listserv are checking on our dear Black colleagues and friends in their immediate circles to offer support and solidarity.
We know confronting anti-Black racism is a core pedagogical tenet that we all hold dear as educators in this group who are involved in justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts. In our journeys to be better allies to Black people, we are called to engage in self-work as individuals and as a collective that is necessary to demonstrate our commitment through action. Confronting and engaging with anti-Black racism is particularly true and necessary for Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) communities given our complicated histories with race, racism, and anti-Blackness.
To support our APIDA students, staff, and faculty in higher education and student affairs programs, we (Christina Yao, Rosemary Perez, RJ Holmes-Leopold, and Vijay Kanagala) are convening a virtual collective forum to dialogue and collectively confront issues of anti-Blackness in our communities. We request your help to share this opportunity with APIDA students, staff, and faculty colleagues who might benefit from this conversation and wish to engage in self-work. Flier is attached and details are provided below:
Topic: Confronting Anti-Blackness in Higher Education: An APIDA Community Conversation
When: Monday, June 1, 2020, 7 pm Eastern/4 pm Pacific
Register here: https://bit.ly/2AgN7xn
There is a limit of 300 registrants.
Our approach for this convening is to invite participants with guiding intentions, facilitate dialogue, and self-generate action-oriented efforts as a collective. Please note that this forum is intentionally being designed as an affinity space for APIDA identifying individuals. There will be no presentations and no recording/live streaming of the forum. Participants are invited to bring resources, ideas, and suggestions for how we can collectively work towards anti-racism.
Like many educators, we are continually trying to figure our role in fighting anti-Blackness in higher education and student affairs and wanted to create a space for our community members to come together. We hope our APIDA colleagues will consider this invitation to come dialogue as a collective to continue this critical work.
Please direct questions or comments to any of the forum conveners.
Be safe. In solidarity.
Christina, Rosie, RJ, and Vijay
Christina W. Yao, Ph.D.
Rosemary J. Perez, Ph. D.
RJ Holmes-Leopold, M.A.
Vijay Kanagala, Ph.D.