Antiracist initiatives recommended by the IU Indianapolis Action Committee
Prompted by the violence and protests experienced in the Summer of 2020, IU Indianapolis formed the Action Committee to examine the university’s actions and policies to identify where systemic racism is translated into higher education’s daily practices, expectations, predictions, decision-making, and regulations that target Black and other people of Color.
An excerpt from the IU Indianapolis Action Committee statement:
“Eventually, doctors will find a coronavirus vaccine, but [B]lack people will continue to wait, despite the futility of hope, for a cure for racism. We will live with the knowledge that a hashtag is not a vaccine for white supremacy. We live with the knowledge that, still, no one is coming to save us. The rest of the world yearns to get back to normal. For [B]lack people, normal is the very thing from which we yearn to be free.” —Roxane Gay
The recommendations that follow acknowledge that Black people, along with all other people of Color and White women occupy college campuses and universities created without them in mind. Moving forward our goal is to reimagine and, over a period of time, recreate a campus with these communities moving from the margins to the center as we strive to never “get back to normal” again.