Dear Enroot Family,
Our community is reeling – especially the many members of our Enroot family who identify as Black. The brutal murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, Tony McDade, and most recently of George Floyd, are devastating and enraging. And they are only the latest symptoms of systemic racism that our country has failed to honestly confront and dismantle for hundreds of years.
Racism in the police and criminal justice system means our students are more likely to be confronted, arrested, or even killed by police officers sworn to protect them. And those charged with a crime are far more likely to be convicted and sentenced harshly than a white person for exactly the same charge.
Racism in our housing system means it is hard to secure safe and adequate housing, creating housing instability that upends the lives of Black communities, over and over.
Racism in our healthcare system means our students and families receive substandard care, which translates to higher rates of illness, and unacceptably high rates of death from preventable illness. This is especially clear during the COVID-19 crisis.
Racism in our school systems makes it harder for our students to get the support they need to thrive academically, harder to get appropriate guidance when preparing for post-secondary education, harder to get financial aid and other supports to succeed during college, and harder to even feel safe and respected within the walls of their school buildings.
Racism in our employment system means our Black students and their families are not paid enough for the hard work they do everyday, playing roles in our community that are without question essential. And it holds so many of our alumni back from advancing during their careers to fully utilize and extend their many amazing talents. Over decades, it prevents wealth building and further widens the astounding gap between the net worth of white people and that of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).
Racism in our social norms sends constant messages of discrimination, othering, and hate to our students, which come often and cut deep.
These examples only begin to capture how Racism acts as a self-reinforcing system, the layers of which are far too numerous to list here and the compounded impact of which is devastating for Black people.
Immigrants who identify as Black, especially, find themselves fearing for their safety on a daily basis. This moment, more than any other in living memory, has made many wonder “Am I safe in this country? Should I consider moving back?” A professional colleague of mine who immigrated from Ethiopia in grade school shared that their grandmother, who still lives in Ethiopia, wrote last week beckoning for her family to return home, where they may not have the same job opportunities but at least they would be safer. Can you imagine how re-traumatizing and heartbreaking it must be for millions of families to finally realize their dream of moving to the United States, only to find themselves feeling greater physical insecurity than they did at home before starting their journey? To arrive at the “Land of the free and home of the brave” and find that they are treated like an underclass, which must fear for its physical well being on a daily basis? We should be ashamed of this reality. But we should not feel helpless in the face of it.
As an anti-racist organization dedicated to educational equity for immigrant students, Enroot is committed to standing by our students in the ways we always have. We are also actively working to expand the ways we support them directly, and to expand the ways we, as a staff and Board, fight systemic racism more broadly through advocacy. But our efforts will clearly not nearly be enough.
In order to truly make progress in dismantling racism, we will need every single person in Enroot’s community to become active in directly confronting and eliminating it. It’s incumbent on all of us to dig deeply, reflect honestly on the roles you inadvertently play in perpetuating racism, and identify all the many ways you can become active in fighting it. We will also need all of you to recruit all of those you are close to in your personal and professional life to become active too. This is not the work of thousands; progress will require many millions of people engaged in collective daily action. And it is not the work of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Although all must be engaged, the responsibility for this change falls especially on white people, like me, who have the greatest access to power and privilege, and the greatest moral responsibility to insist on change.
Thank you for channeling the outrage of this moment to become active on a daily basis in combating racism all around you, and for continuing to support Enroot students.
Ben Clark
Executive Director