Wednesday June 10, 3 p.m. PST/6 p.m. ESTOn May 25, 2020, we watched in horror as four Minneapolis police officers spent close to nine minutes murdering George Floyd while preventing anyone from intervening to stop it. Floyd’s case comes on the heels of Ahmaud Arbery, Sean Reed, and Breonna Taylor, and so many others killed at the hands of the police. The time to confront the systematic failures in our law enforcement practices is now and more urgently needed today. Rather than view these cases and others as isolated, the widespread and systemic nature of our policing and institutional racism produces and shapes the outcomes in our country and society. Indeed, race, racism, and racialization are everywhere, as it regulates and develops all of our institutions, produce the disparities in health, income, education and shortens the lifespan for African Americans and minorities, as well as facilitate locking up human potential in a made for-profit prison industrial complex and a structure that controls the bodies and space of targeted communities. Ethnic Studies, as an academic field, came into existence to address the historical erasures, systematic violence and the inequities, the racism, and violations of civil and human rights, which have always been there in plain sight. The Ethnic Studies community invites you to a teach-in and conversation that examines the long and complex history of race, racism, and racialization, focusing on bringing about change and transformation. The world we aspire for is the one we shape through our own ideas, plans, solidarities and actions. |
