STATEMENT OF SOLIDARITY WITH BLACK LIVES MATTER & ANTI-RACISM

 

May 30, 2020

 

The Anthropologists re-affirms our solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and against systemic racism and police violence. 

 

We pledge to continue the work of dismantling white supremacy in our organization and art, as well as in our artistic community at large. We turn to this responsibility with greater vigilance than ever.

 

We see and value our fellow artists of color and wish to provide a safe and just creative home, one that is informed by anti-racist values and practices.

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Our commitments:

 

• We will seek out resources to strengthen and articulate our company’s anti-racist policies.

• We will make anti-racist training available to company members.

• We will continue to empower, uplift and hire artists of color.  

 

A personal message from Artistic Director, Melissa Moschitto:

 

Four years ago, in the fall of 2016, I attended the Undoing Racism workshop led by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB). This workshop fully revealed to me my own whiteness and my complicity in a system and structures that were set into motion over 400 years ago and still upheld today. This training initiated a process of recognizing and dismantling my own internalized white supremacy.

 

To be anti-racist is a state of being, not a box to be checked off of a list. It requires diligence and conscious effort, self-reflection, knowledge building and action. I have made progress but I also have to recognize where I have fallen short. I am listening and learning.

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As a white led artistic institution, I know that we have an urgent responsibility to root out the overt and covert symptoms of white supremacy. I am recommitting to this goal.

 

If you are interested in the anti-racist training, please visit: www.pisab.org. 

 

If you are in a position to financially support PISAB so that they may continue their necessary work, we urge you to do so today.

 

Read our #BLM statement from 2016 here.