From the assaults on Black knowledge, the dismantling of affirmative action, the proliferation of racially targeted voter suppression and the deterioration of DEI there is a broad scale campaign to undermine and circumscribe Black progress. This coordinated campaign has already begun to adversely impact the wealth, health and rights of Black communities across the country. This project is undergirded by an old but powerful ideology: that Black advancement comes at the expense of white America. History reminds us that Black achievement is not guaranteed in a society that chooses autocracy over democracy, greed over equity and lying over the truth. In the face of this anti-democratic attack, institutions are choosing to ignore these historical lessons by compromising and appeasing these forces rather than resisting them to defend the aspiration of a truly inclusive multiracial democracy. This keynote panel will bring together Kimberle Crenshaw, Shavon Arline-Bradley, Tanya Kateri Hernández, Marc Morial, and Janai Nelson to not only make sense of the threat posed to Black America but begin to chart out the urgent work to save our freedom dreams.

In March earlier this year AAPF convened an urgent panel as part of our Her Dream Deferred series to bring together Black women from a variety of sectors to sound the alarm about Black women’s vulnerability to these attacks in the war on woke and discuss how we should see the long-term efforts to undermine Black women’s place in society as part of a larger assault on civil rights and democracy. Since that conversation the continued attack on Black women in universities, politics and businesses has continued unabated. From the cynical coopting of anti-discrimination law to target the Black women owned and funding, Fearless Fund, to the defamation of DEI used to force Claudine Gay out of her historic position as Harvard president, to the countless Black women being scrutinized and silenced in workplaces across the country under the DEI witchhunt, it is evident that this crisis is rapidly escalating. It is also important to highlight that the fuel used to stoke this fire targeted ideas produced by Black women in this country which has been labeled as divisive and dangerous – whether this is Black feminism, intersectionality, critical race theory or the 1619 project. The storm that has been […]