Can't Stop, Won't Stop | Diverse Education

Picture the moment you watch a police officer kneel on a Black man's (George Floyd) neck on the side of a busy street with folks watching. To go further, reflect on the moment when police bombarded a Black woman's “Breonna Taylor” and shot her to death. If you are reading this, I am sure your heart has been tugged on, and you remember where you were sitting in 2020 during a global pandemic. Nevertheless, you may always remember the influence of solidarity of standing against racial injustices and a racial awakening that America had some deep-rooted issues that we have continuously glossed over for decades. Maybe you participated in marches in your city or watched via your television; wherever you were, you felt this immense pressure to be a change agent. Whether that was true action statements, donations, or implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training, everyone was scrambling around, trying to be reactive change agents. Specifically, being a Black male researcher-practitioner, I had “hope” in 2020 that we were beginning to peel back the layers of America that, for decades, we, as critical scholars and communities of color, have been sharing since slavery. Or so we thought!

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Ongoing conflicts and acts of violence within the US and outside the US have a real impact on our members regardless of their identity group. As the Board of Directors on behalf of the Association, we condemn terrorism and violence in all forms and acknowledge the tremendous pain and suffering in Israel and Gaza — both for those directly affected and any member with personal and cultural ties to the region. 

This is an extremely emotional and heartbreaking situation not only for our members who identify as Jewish or Muslim but for all of us who have compassion for people suffering through so much loss. We encourage members of our Association to access the resources within their organizations to get support, to show support, and/or to educate themselves about the history and context of the violence in the region. 

The Southern Association of Colleges and Employers extends deep concern for our colleagues, students, and friends in the Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Community after the tragic events that occurred in Atlanta, Georgia earlier this week.  We condemn the acts of violence, discrimination and hate crimes displayed toward the AAPI community.             

Hate crimes have grown exponentially across the country over the last year. The Stop AAPI Hate, database was created at the beginning of the pandemic as a response to the increase in racial violence and has received 2,808 reports of anti-Asian discrimination between March 19 and December 31, 2020.

As our nation suffers through the civil unrest we’ve witnessed as a result of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery these last few weeks, we, as a Board of Directors on behalf of the Association, reaffirm our commitment to diversity and our opposition to racism, prejudice, hatred, exclusion, and bigotry. Every one of us has the power to find opportunities to acknowledge and value all human life.

The troubling acts of violence we’ve witnessed lately are indications that our country continues to suffer from racial injustice. At the most recent SoACE conference in Memphis, we were reminded during our visit to the National Civil Rights Museum that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. ...Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail). Knowing our country’s history of systemic racism is the best way to equip us with changing things today and in the future.