Statement of Support for Black Lives from WGSS Faculty

June 1, 2020

We, as WGSS faculty members at Yale, stand in solidarity with the protests against the murder of George Floyd, and against state-sanctioned racism and racist police and civilian violence. As scholars, we research, write and teach about various forms of violence, exploitation, and extraction. We study racial inequality and the racist distribution of resources and opportunities. We study the racialized history of colonialism, imperialism, and mass incarceration. We emphasize that race, gender, sexuality, class, citizenship, ability and other axes of inequality produce asymmetrical, discriminatory distributions of life chances. Police violence against people of color, and especially Black people, is a systemic, foundational condition of the United States. Foundational, but nonessential.

We demand justice for George Floyd, and for all Black lives. We stand in solidarity with the policy demands of the Black Lives Matter movement that call for ending:  the death penalty; mass surveillance of communities of color; the privatization of police; the cumulative costs of criminal records; and violence against Black people of all genders.