A year ago the SFCC President’s Diversity Advisory Committee (PDAC) released our statement decrying the murder of George Floyd and calling for Santa Fe Community College to become an actively anti-racist campus.
We specifically chose Juneteenth, or June 19th, memorialize June 19, 1865, when the last enslaved people in Texas were declared free under the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862. One-hundred-fifty-six years later, we are not free. Racism keeps us all in chains.
In the year since George Floyd was murdered, our nation has continued to endure violence and bigotry—yet communities across the country have mobilized against hate in ways we could never have imagined. We have begun our work to embrace SFCC’s anti-racist identity.
In March 2021, the President’s Diversity Advisory Committee produced SFCC’s professional development day, the SFCC Anti-Racist Leadership Conference. SFCC staff and faculty received professional development opportunities designed to challenge our assumptions, uncover our biases, and enhance our work. Trainings addressed non-violent communication, universal design, and anti-racist pedagogy. This program was one of the ways we have created change on our campus.
Over the next year we will engage with our college community through events under the theme, “Becoming Anti-Racist.” We understand that being anti-racist it is not a goal to achieve, but a way of life to embody.
Through intersectional analysis we will dismantle the systems of racism in our college to center inclusion, equity, and justice in our work and learning for every person at SFCC.
Unlike so many instances of a Black, Indigenous or other Person of Color experiencing violence and death under the knee of a white oppressor, George Floyd’s murderer was convicted for his crime. It is one step toward acknowledging, understanding, and embodying: Black lives matter.
Belin Tsinnajinnie, Ph.D., Brooke Gondara, Ed.D., Emily Drabanski, Emily Stern, Kate McCahill, Meghan McGarrity and Sarah Hood on behalf of the President’s Diversity Advisory Committee (PDAC) and the Land Acknowledgement Task Force
