Ongoing acts of state and state-sponsored violence against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) are steeped in centuries of racism, white supremacy, and racial capitalism. Anthropology is an academic discipline that has historically authorized and perpetrated colonial harms. For far too long now, anthropologists have remained complicit in our current system of violence by staying passive within the received and accepted norms of our discipline.
From this moment forward, the University of Tennessee’s Department of Anthropology will actively work to redress harms among ourselves and in the world at large. As a community of predominantly White scholars, we have the privilege to help dismantle and rebuild this system. Therefore, the Department of Anthropology unequivocally commits to actively building a welcoming, inclusive, supportive, and equitable space for BIPOC communities.
We must initiate this work through the reform of our own department. As steps toward building a better community within our academic department and toward fostering broader change through our programs, we commit to the following:
- To actively recruit, retain, and recognize the value of students, staff, and faculty of color;
- To decolonize our practices, such as:
- introduce our students, and ourselves, to a greater number of voices and perspectives of BIPOC scholars in our course content
- rethinking (collectively) structures of power that we shape by our participation in institutions
- confronting the subject/object relationships (involving notions of “expertise”) within anthropological research
- To draw on the expertise of members of our department and affiliated programs to teach and talk about issues of race, oppression, and conflict, and also seek solutions;
- To work with our subdisciplinary societies to provide more professional opportunities for BIPOC students and professionals.
We are also committed to promoting anti-racism outside of academia. This can include:
- Supporting organizations and movements that push for social justice;
- Urging our fellow faculty and students to advocate for community-oriented crisis management;
- Thinking seriously and honestly about how our own everyday practices might be complicit in systems that perpetuate anti-Black violence
- this includes engaging in uncomfortable conversations and taking a deep look at our daily actions and inactions, what we say, and when we remain silent;
- Encouraging participation in growing conversations on divestment and abolition;
- Volunteering and conducting outreach projects in underserved communities;
- Supporting BIPOC-owned businesses;
- Being informed about local issues and political practices that impact marginalized people and actively participating (whether that be through voting, grassroots participation, or otherwise).
We recognize that a major part of anti-Black and anti-BIPOC violence is intricately related to systems that perpetuate violence against queer and trans persons, especially BIPOC queer and trans persons.
These lists are not exhaustive, and we welcome input from our community about how we can better serve Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the classroom and workplace, in our research, and in the greater community.