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Anti-Racism Statement & Resources

Walnut Hill School for the Arts explicitly affirms our identity as an anti-racist educational institution.

We condemn racism, discrimination, and bigotry in all forms. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Through education in academics and the arts, our goal is to counteract racism, promote the dismantling of systems of oppression, and empower our students towards these goals. We recognize that racism is systemic and self-perpetuating. Therefore the work of consistently identifying, describing, and dismantling it requires a sustained systemic approach to examining organizational structures, policy, practice, attitudes, and outcomes. All members of the Walnut Hill community—students, staff, faculty, administration, trustees, alumni, and families—will continue to build the tools and skills needed to actively engage in conversations about privilege, racism, and bigotry in the hopes of empowering community members to enact change that will cultivate equitable outcomes for all. 

Walnut Hill is actively engaged in this work through initiatives that drive change such as faculty, staff, alumni, and student Affinity Groups; assemblies; ongoing community conversations; events; professional development, including mandated SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity Project on Inclusive Curriculum); and individual curricular work and engagement with students.

"We can't become what we need to be by remaining what we are."Oprah Winfrey

 

For more information on these initiatives, please contact Director of Diversity and Inclusion Linda Hughes at lhughes@walnuthillarts.org.

While we have made strides to eliminate racism, we commit to:
  • Identifying and deconstructing areas in our school culture, curriculum, programming, and communications that have contributed to systemic racism within our organization.

  • Improving and expanding support structures, as well as creating new initiatives and programs that empower historically oppressed and marginalized peoples.

  • Building awareness, education, and self-interrogation in an environment of grace and humility as a critical step in dismantling systemic inequities.

  • Examining and developing equity at a systemic level including school operations; policies; programs; employment practices; and admission, financial aid, and tuition structures.

  • Diversifying the racial and socioeconomic composition of the Board of Trustees and all School leadership. The Board of Trustees additionally commits to ongoing training in justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism work.

  • Developing a specific plan to provide expanded equitable access to a high quality arts education.

  • Supporting community members so that everyone can participate fully in all aspects of Walnut Hill.

  • Creating a safe space for students to process and respond to experiences of racism and inequity in our programs and the greater community.

  • Developing opportunities for alumni to engage in anti-racism conversations and work.

  • Establishing comprehensive anti-racism strategies and procedures, including faculty and staff training, to help prevent and respond to issues of racism and discrimination in the community.

  • Working with our current and future partner organizations to create a cohesive educational experience rooted in equity and justice.

  • Creating a racial equity communications strategy that includes community-wide messages to respond to racial and social inequities.

  • Requiring all Walnut Hill employees to set annual equity-focused professional goals and review them yearly with their supervisors and school administration.

These commitments will directly impact the Walnut Hill community experience, institutional culture, curriculum, and programs. In order to hold ourselves accountable, we will undergo periodic formal evaluations and climate assessments by an external professional organization.

While we have much work ahead of us in the areas of anti-racism and promotion of equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice, Walnut Hill understands and embraces our responsibility as a privileged community in dismantling systems of oppression. Please join us in actively combating racial inequities and advancing anti-racism work to create a world in which we truly live out our values of Non Nobis Solum (“not for ourselves alone”).

Resources

There are a number of ways that you can join alongside members of our community to support organizations that support racial justice and healing. Here are a few suggestions:

  • Educate yourself. Learn about privilege and how it  can impact others negatively;
  • Familiarize yourself with anti-racist work – Read (some suggestions below);
  • Check on your Black friends, loved ones, colleagues, and friends on those on the front lines;
  • Support and donate to initiatives that aid marginalized groups. Sign petitions for those groups you support;
  • Create a strategy for being an agent for change. Become more active in dismantling systems of oppression.
Reading Suggestions

On Understanding Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Language

  • How to Be an Antiracist – Ibram X. Kendi
  • Stamped From the Beginning – Ibram X. Kendi 
    If You Are White: 
  • White Fragility – Robyn DiAngelo
  • On Being White – Debbie Irving
  • Your Black Colleagues May Look Ok - Chances Are They’re Not - Refinery29 Article 
Viewing Suggestions

Appendix

Anti-Racism: Anti-racism is the active process of identifying and eliminating racism by changing systems, organizational structures, policies and practices and attitudes, so that power is redistributed and shared equitably."
SOURCE: NAC International Perspectives: Women and Global Solidarity, cited by the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Center.

Anti-racist: An anti-racist is someone who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing antiracist ideas. This includes the expression or ideas that racial groups are equals and do not need developing, and supporting policies that reduce racial inequity.
SOURCE: Ibram X Kendi, How to be an Antiracist, Random House, 2019

Bigotry: Bigotry is the intolerance of the ideas of others and the uncritical and rigid devotion to one's own opinions. It is often manifested in the hatred or intolerance of an entire group, often different from oneself.

Discrimination: Discrimination is the unequal treatment of members of various groups based on their identity (e.g. race, gender, social class, and other categories).

Diversity: Diversity is quantitative and speaks to who we are. Diversity is the entire range of human differences that includes but is not limited to race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic status, physical and cognitive abilities, religious affiliation, ethical values, national origin and political beliefs.

Equality: Equality is providing the same level of opportunity and assistance to all segments of society, such as races and genders.

Equity: Equity means providing various levels of support and assistance to members of society, depending on their specific needs or abilities, so that they can develop to their full potential.

Inclusion: Inclusion is qualitative. Inclusion is the deliberate act of welcoming diversity and it recognizes the inherent worth and dignity of all people. An inclusive school promotes and sustains a sense of belonging; it values and respects the talents, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of living of its community members so that all different kinds of people can thrive and succeed.

Privilege: Privilege is an advantage, formally or informally, that benefits a person or group and tends to be associated with wealth and social class. However, it does not only come from wealth. Privilege is often invisible to those who have it, and so people who are privileged often contribute to and perpetuate, intentionally or not, the oppression of others. A person can experience both privilege and its lack because of different aspects of their identity.

Race: Race is a social and political concept, not a scientific one. Categorizations of race were invented to support worldviews that viewed some groups of people as superior and some inferior. There are three important concepts linked to this fact:

  • Race is a made-up construct, and not an actual biological fact.
  • Race designations have changed over time. Some groups that are considered “white” in the United States today were considered “non-white” in previous eras, in the U.S. Census data and in mass media and popular culture (for example, Irish, Italian, and Jewish people).
  • The way in which racial categorizations are enforced has also changed over time. For example, the racial designation of Asian American and Pacific Islander changed four times in the 19th century.
    SOURCE: PBS, Race: Power of an Illusion
    Paul Kivel, Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice (Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2002), p.141.

Racism: Racism is a system that encompasses economic, political, social, and cultural structures, actions, and beliefs that institutionalize and perpetuate an unequal distribution of privileges, resources and power between White people and people of Color. This system is historic, normalized, taken for granted, deeply embedded, and works to the benefit of Whites and to the disadvantage of People of Color (Hilliard, 1992).

SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity): The National SEED Project (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity)SM partners with schools, organizations, and communities to develop leaders who guide their peers in conversational communities to drive personal, organizational, and societal change toward social justice. The purpose of these learning spaces is to create an effective environment for learning and flourishing where curricula, teaching methods, and workplace practices are gender fair, multiculturally equitable, socioeconomically aware, and globally informed. National SEED project website

Social Justice: Social justice includes a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure.
SOURCE: Maurine Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin, editors. Teaching for Diversity and Justice: a Sourcebook.

Systems of Oppression: Systemic Oppression is the disadvantaging of groups of people based on their identity while advantaging members of the dominant group.