Dr. Cindi Love, Executive Director

As we conclude 2014, ACPA is deeply engaged in actionable and measurable efforts to implement our core values and, most particularly, equity and inclusion. During the last quarter of 2014, we organized and facilitated six community dialogues entitled Constructing Inclusion in six states. Following the non-indictments in Ferguson and New York, we hosted four free national webinars Confronting Reality and a fifth is scheduled January 13. On January 19, Rev, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we will launch a sponsored video series that was filmed in St. Louis/Ferguson a few weeks ago. Students, faculty, administrators and community organizers volunteered to talk to ACPA about their experience at the contested intersections of academia and protests, militarization of the police and the lives of young black men. We learned so much from them and want to share what they so willingly shared with us. 

At Convention in Tampa, we will host the Southern Poverty Law Center and a documentary of Selma in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the events there. We cannot reach or sustain values of equity and inclusion without actively promoting racial justice and equity by challenging systemic racism and acting as a catalyst for anti-racist learning and action. Part of our focus in the first quarter of 2015 will be the educational opportunities described and visible challenges to the historical and ongoing role racism plays in the institutions that shape all of our lives. We will focus particularly on involving white people in understanding and confronting systemic racism and white privilege. We understand racism as a system that impacts every area of life in the United States from education to law, from housing to transportation, from employment to media, from religion to artistic expression. This system privileges white people and oppresses people of color, giving whites disproportionate power to

  • make and enforce decisions
  • access resources
  • set the standards for behavior which are imposed on everyone and
  • name the view of “reality” with which everyone must agree 

To transform this system requires that a critical mass of white people come to recognize the injustice of the system and participate collectively in dismantling the privilege they receive from the system at the cost of people of color. 

As thought leaders in student learning and development, we are obligated to recognize the cost racism plays in the lives of our students as individuals and collectively. And, once we recognize that cost, it is our duty to change ourselves and advocate for systemic change. We look forward to this work with each of you.