Dear School Leaders, 

We are writing to express our concern about incentives that have been offered to us as BIPOC community members participating in a variety of engagement opportunities (eg. focus groups, completing surveys, attending school events, etc.). As parents and caregivers of color we have been following the public events related to companies that support equitable practices that benefit our community and companies that have practices that we perceive to have harmful effects on our community.  

It has been deeply frustrating to see the number of incentives offered to us that require us to patronize companies that clearly do not care about our communities. Target, for example, has a long history of being led by explicitly Antiblack and racist leaders and have invested in surveillance and targeting of Black youth nationwide (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9pJuhyNUlk ( https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/the-hidden-side-of-target-surveillance-policing-and-a-call-for-scrutiny/ Therefore, when we are offered Target gift cards we are positioned to forfeit our compensation or participate in the support of companies that we understand to be harmful to our communities.  Please stop asking us to participate in our own oppression by offering us gift cards from vendors that don’t prioritize the wellbeing of our communities. 

We understand the value of our time and experience when we show up and participate in various engagement opportunities and are asking all system level leaders to understand that our values are not to be ignored. Can you imagine offering bus cards as incentives to community members working towards justice by participating in the Montgomery Bus Boycott? In the same way you honor cultural values around food, holidays, and other customs please honor many of our perspectives around justice and consumerism. These values and perspectives are not a political aside, but are very much connected to our wellbeing–as individuals, as families and as BIPOC communities. 

Please stop offering incentives that are limited to only vendors that have publicly denounced DEI values and/or have strong patterns of practices that create harm for our communities. We recognize that not all BIPOC families object to patronizing such vendors but because many of us do, please offer additional options that honor this perspective.