Solidarity with Black Lives Matter

UConn Department of Anthropology Solidarity Statement with Black Lives Matter

The Department of Anthropology of the University of Connecticut joins the UConn community in proclaiming Black Lives Matter. We stand with the Black community against systemic racism and ongoing police brutality. We mourn with the family, friends, and communities of Black people who have lost their lives to racism and police violence, including George Floyd, David McAtee, Atatiana Jefferson, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Kathryn Johnston, Ayiana Stanley-Jones, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, John Crawford III, Oscar Grant, and countless others whose names are not as well known. We also recognize that the Black community, along with Latinx and Native American communities, are disproportionately burdened by the COVID-19 pandemic because of the long and ongoing history of structural racism.

We commit to being strong and vocal allies who confront racism, injustice, and discrimination wherever it occurs in society, including within our discipline. We commit to practice anthropological research that is anti-racist and against all forms of discrimination and to work to improve the lives of Native American, Black, Latinx, and other marginalized populations with whom we work. And we reaffirm our commitment to anti-racist pedagogy as we dedicate ourselves to educating and empowering UConn students to become agents of change in our collective struggle for a just future.

Our department will take action immediately by assembling an anti-racism curriculum of anthropology courses for dissemination to the UConn student body and making race a mandatory topic for our Fall 2020 introductory courses. We pledge further action in the Fall semester by forming a committee of faculty and graduate students to identify and implement strategies to address racial disparity.  These strategies include, but are not limited to 1) reviewing and revising our course offerings and syllabi on race, racism, white supremacy, white privilege, and the experiences of Black people and other communities of color in the United States and globally, 2) increasing our recruitment of graduate and undergraduate students of color and making our department more welcoming to students from diverse backgrounds, 3) continuing our efforts to recruit and hire more faculty of color and providing them with mentorship to advance their careers and scholarship. We will disseminate an annual report on our efforts, recommendations, and outcomes on our department Web site and to the wider UConn community.

 

We endorse these statements from UConn’s Institutes/Centers:

Statement from Centers, Institutes and Programs on Racial Justice:

https://humanrights.uconn.edu/2020/06/05/statement-from-centers-institutes-and-programs-on-racial-justice/

 

Public Statement on Anti-Black Violence from Africana Studies Institute:

https://africana.uconn.edu/public-statement-on-anti-black-violence/

 

Joint Statement from the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center and Human Rights Institute:

https://humanrights.uconn.edu/2020/06/05/joint-statement-from-the-dodd-center-and-human-rights-institute/

 

In solidarity,

 

Department of Anthropology (Faculty, Graduate Students and Staff), University of Connecticut

July 3, 2020.

 

Posted by BD in News