Our Commitments

As an addendum to our Open Letter, we, as members of the APIA education community, make the following commitments:

• We commit to becoming antiracist in ourselves, our families, our personal networks, our professional networks, and our communities. We commit to doing our own work of introspection and self-reflection, truth-telling, and reconciliation. Equipped with this knowledge, we commit to standing up, speaking up, and taking action.
• We commit to working in solidarity and across differences towards educational equity and justice. We commit to evaluating how white supremacy cultural norms play out in our work environments in policies, systems, and structures. More specifically, we commit to dismantling discriminatory practices in K-12 education, including those that address the learning outcomes of Black and other marginalized students and contribute to the systemized trauma that fuels the school-to-prison pipeline.
• We commit to educating ourselves about the history of communities of color in the United States, surfacing the stories that we did not learn in school, and correcting misinformation when we encounter it. This includes learning the history of violence against members of our community, institutionalized in the Chinese Exclusion Act and countless laws thereafter; as well as the creation of the ‘model minority’ myth to reinforce racist narratives and sow division between communities of color; and the anti-Blackness that has been part of the process of our “Americanization”.
• We commit to learning more about the intertwined histories of Black civil rights, the Asian American movement, and the struggles of marginalized communities. We commit to amplifying stories of allyship, solidarity, and interrogating and learning from stories of where we have made progress or fallen short.
• We commit to advancing the voices and experiences of the Black community and other marginalized communities (including, but not limited to LatinX and Indigenous voices).
• We commit to actively participating in our democracy as fully as we can — expressing our voices, encouraging voter registration, showing up to vote, fighting voter suppression, and demanding antiracist policies and antiracist leaders that support justice.
• We commit to interrupting patterns and moments of colorism and anti-Blackness within our APIA community — especially among our families, friends, and colleagues. We will initiate the hard conversations we need to have, without hesitating due to our own fear, discomfort, or frustration.