Dear Members of the Asian and Asian American Faculty and Staff Council:
The board of the Asian and Asian American Faculty and Staff Council want to express our solidarity and support for Black faculty, staff, and students at this troubling time. AAAFSC was founded, in part, to address inequity and racism and to foster belonging and inclusion at our campus. We mourn the senseless killing and deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Breonna Taylor. We affirm our commitment to support Black lives and communities on our campus and beyond and to fight against anti-Black racism, particularly within our Asian and Asian American communities.
We support the statement issued by the Association for Asian American Studies (posted below), and will continue to use our group as a platform in the shared struggle against structural racism and white supremacy.
In solidarity,
The board of the Asian American Faculty and Staff Association at UMBC
Tamara Bhalla, Aditya Desai, Soonhee Lee, Jiaqi Gong, Soonhee Lee
*****
Statement from the Association for Asian American Studies: June 2020
The Association for Asian American Studies unites in solidarity with our Black family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and co-workers to call for an immediate end to anti-Black racism and the killing of Black people. We are an organization committed to social justice, intersectional analysis, and global human rights. Our fight against anti-Asian pandemic racism is rooted in a common struggle against White supremacy. The recent murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and George Floyd propel us to state, clearly and definitively, that Black lives matter and that we must abolish the militarized police state in which anti-Black racism is embedded. To end global anti-Black racism, we must fight racism in our local communities and educate ourselves and others about the rich history of Black Americans and support, validate, and value Black lives now and always.
The Association for Asian American Studies Board of Directors
*Karin Aguilar-SanJuan, Mid-West Representative
*Falu Bakrania, Northern California and Nevada Representative
*Keva Bui, Graduate Student Representative
*Jason Oliver Chang, New England/Central and Eastern Canada
Representative
*Jenny DeLuna, Assistant Director
*Chris A. Eng, Section Representative
*Anna Gonzalez, Managing Director
*Jennifer Ho, President
*Caroline Hong, Mid-Atlantic Representative
**Mimi Khuc, Contingent Faculty Representative
*Jinah Kim, Southern California Representative
*Tamara Ko, Associate Director
*Karen Kuo, Interior West/South Representative
*Rod Labrador, Pacific Northwest, Hawai’i and Pacific Islands & Western Canada Representative
*Paul Lai, Archivist
