The following is a statement from UHD's Center for Critical Race Studies.

Dear UHD Community,

On March 16, 2021, a series of mass shootings occured at three Asian-run businesses in Atlanta, Ga., resulting in the killing of eight people—six of them women of Asian descent. The Fellows of the Center for Critical Race Studies at UHD strongly condemn all forms of racialized violence and we are outraged by this recent tragedy which highlights—once again—the deadly intersections of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia, and makes it abundantly clear that members of the Asian and Pacific Islander community do not have the privilege of living and working in a terror-free world. This massacre occurs amid increasingly vicious attacks against members of the AAPI community across the nation, particularly women and elders. We are here to express our commitment to the AAPI community and to be allies, especially for AAPI women.

The Center for Critical Race Studies at UHD will always be a safe space for our Asian and Asian American community members, and we will continue to advocate for their rights in addition to the rights of all who endure interlocking and unrelenting systems of oppression. Central to the Center’s mission of producing knowledge, transforming lives, and empowering communities is our commitment to listen, learn, and facilitate public discourse that illuminates how the ordinariness of racism, sexism, and other forms of systemic oppression impact everyday lives. We will keep working to disrupt the silence around anti-Asian acts of hate by uncovering the recent and historical contexts for what might otherwise be dismissed as an incident of random violence.

We invite our community to share questions, comments, or experiences with us in this forum or via email at ccrs@uhd.edu. We will be continuing this conversation and sharing more resources in the next issue of our newsletter, The Connect.

In solidarity, 

The Fellows of the Center for Critical Race Studies