Day of Action Signatures
The Issue
November 19, 2020
STATEMENT
Dear Southampton School District Board of Education:
In solidarity with the November 19th Day of Action collective, we call on our leaders, colleagues, and partners to affirm the central place that anti-racist policies, practices, and curricula have in our school. We call for an increased commitment to and investment in resources to build the capacity of our school to address racism—as it intersects with colonialism, anti-Blackness, white supremacy, sexism, and other forms of oppression—through personnel, curricula, professional development, programming, and policy interventions. This is a moment when the target of attack is not merely anti-racist education, but the much broader work of educating for democracy. Our school can and must do more to intervene.
In this moment when leaders in our nation’s highest offices are mischaracterizing the goals, content, and outcomes of diversity training and anti-racist education and are threatening institutions that offer such training and curriculum, we believe it is imperative that our school unequivocally articulate and act even more forcefully on our long-standing commitments to democracy and social justice.
The so-called “Executive Order on Combatting Race and Sex Stereotyping,” issued by the White House in late September, has already had a weakening effect in the public sector, the business sector, and academia as well, as schools, colleges, and universities are cancelling trainings and speakers and as they face civil-rights investigations for acknowledging institutional and historical racism. Such retreats from anti-racist work compound decades of censorship and austerity that were already functioning to reduce or eliminate diversity training, affirmative hiring, and anti-racist curriculum and programming for students, particularly in the past decade when schools, colleges, and universities across the country have struggled significantly with declining revenue and resources.
Our institution must step forward with a commitment to expand anti-racist academic programs, extracurricular programming, and support services, and to recruit and support faculty and other personnel that most directly advance these goals, goals that our institution has long claimed to be central to our mission. Specifically, the commitment that was made on June 22, 2020 during a zoom meeting with several Southampton School District Administrators to “take accountability” and actively work towards making the changes mentioned in Petition · Anti-Racist Education and Policy Enforcement in Southampton School District. These commitments mean nothing if we are not prepared to defend them when they are under attack.
In the attached statement, signed by over 2100 educators, scholars, and organizations across the United States, the call to action is made clear: “Our country cannot become more just and democratic without illuminating, addressing, and healing from its long legacies of injustices, including imperialism, colonialism, and racism…. [W]e reject the renewed calls to deny or ignore the legacies and systems of racism that have long defined and shaped U.S. schools and society and that continue to do so. Our job is to teach toward democracy by teaching the truth.” The same must apply in our own institution.
Sincerely,
The Issue
November 19, 2020
STATEMENT
Dear Southampton School District Board of Education:
In solidarity with the November 19th Day of Action collective, we call on our leaders, colleagues, and partners to affirm the central place that anti-racist policies, practices, and curricula have in our school. We call for an increased commitment to and investment in resources to build the capacity of our school to address racism—as it intersects with colonialism, anti-Blackness, white supremacy, sexism, and other forms of oppression—through personnel, curricula, professional development, programming, and policy interventions. This is a moment when the target of attack is not merely anti-racist education, but the much broader work of educating for democracy. Our school can and must do more to intervene.
In this moment when leaders in our nation’s highest offices are mischaracterizing the goals, content, and outcomes of diversity training and anti-racist education and are threatening institutions that offer such training and curriculum, we believe it is imperative that our school unequivocally articulate and act even more forcefully on our long-standing commitments to democracy and social justice.
The so-called “Executive Order on Combatting Race and Sex Stereotyping,” issued by the White House in late September, has already had a weakening effect in the public sector, the business sector, and academia as well, as schools, colleges, and universities are cancelling trainings and speakers and as they face civil-rights investigations for acknowledging institutional and historical racism. Such retreats from anti-racist work compound decades of censorship and austerity that were already functioning to reduce or eliminate diversity training, affirmative hiring, and anti-racist curriculum and programming for students, particularly in the past decade when schools, colleges, and universities across the country have struggled significantly with declining revenue and resources.
Our institution must step forward with a commitment to expand anti-racist academic programs, extracurricular programming, and support services, and to recruit and support faculty and other personnel that most directly advance these goals, goals that our institution has long claimed to be central to our mission. Specifically, the commitment that was made on June 22, 2020 during a zoom meeting with several Southampton School District Administrators to “take accountability” and actively work towards making the changes mentioned in Petition · Anti-Racist Education and Policy Enforcement in Southampton School District. These commitments mean nothing if we are not prepared to defend them when they are under attack.
In the attached statement, signed by over 2100 educators, scholars, and organizations across the United States, the call to action is made clear: “Our country cannot become more just and democratic without illuminating, addressing, and healing from its long legacies of injustices, including imperialism, colonialism, and racism…. [W]e reject the renewed calls to deny or ignore the legacies and systems of racism that have long defined and shaped U.S. schools and society and that continue to do so. Our job is to teach toward democracy by teaching the truth.” The same must apply in our own institution.
Sincerely,
The Decision Makers
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Petition created on November 18, 2020