We Commit to Racial Equity
We stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and with every organization that is fighting for racial equity and justice. Our hearts are broken by the injustice and grief around us. Crisis layered upon crisis has inflicted and deepened collective trauma everywhere, and especially in Black communities. The past months have further underscored the shameful scourge of racial oppression that has pervaded our country since its founding.
We recognize the ways in which our education system is implicated in producing deep inequities in our society because of its inherent design. We also believe in education’s foundational potential to support healing, to build bridges, and to cultivate leaders who can fight racism and build a better tomorrow. To do that, we must have learning environments that are grounded in truth of the past, that create possibility for the future, and that support young people to take up the mantle of social justice.
Words are not enough. We must take intentional action to disrupt the systems which create unequal worlds for Black people. Every day, our work—and that of our partners across the country—springs from a desire to redesign this system so that the heart of it is truly about justice, love, and learning. We stand with all of our community and organizational partners in this effort.
Our current—and long overdue—conversation about racial justice underscores the importance of not just responding to this moment, but of truly reinventing the human and institutional structures that have gotten us here. Like our country, we have much more work to do, starting with reexamining ourselves and our organization’s approaches at every level, and pressing on until our country’s learning environments truly enable all young people to thrive in and transform the world.
Yours in grief and determination,
Transcend is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit that operates nationally.
