Statements

The members of Race, Difference and Power has published detail statements on  issues of social justice and equity within UNC Campus and beyond. These statements can be found below –

Open Letter to the Board of Trustees Concerning Academic Integrity at UNC-Chapel Hill

June 28, 2021

Letter Concerning Academic Integrity 2021-6-28

Concerning the Possession and Unethical Use of the Remains of the Children of MOVE and the Africa Family: A Statement in Solidarity with the Association of Black Anthropologists, the Society of Black Archaeologists, and the Black in Bioanthropology Collective

April 29, 2021

Thirty-six years ago, the Philadelphia Police Department bombed the residence of the MOVE family, and killed eleven family members, including five children. Those same bombs also destroyed 61 adjacent residences – more than an entire city block. At the time, it was widely believed that the remains of those killed in the fire had not been located. However, it has now come to light that the skeletal remains of at least one child in this extended Black family have been kept by two biological anthropologists rather than returned to the surviving family members. Worse yet, these bones have been regularly exhibited in a virtual bioanthropology course taught by one of these anthropologists.

The members of the Race Difference and Power Concentration of the Anthropology Department at UNC Chapel Hill emphatically endorse the statement by the Association of Black Anthropologists (ABA), the Society of Black Archeologists (SBA), and the Black in Bioanthropology Collective (BiBA) demanding that the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Department of Anthropology of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University immediately take restorative and reparative measures that redress the unethical treatment of MOVE family remains. We deplore and condemn the callous acts employed in the treatment of these remains, unethically kept for three decades from MOVE family members within a purportedly “scientific” skeletal collection. This is yet another example of the failure of the anthropological discipline to fully come to terms with its history and legacy of racialized anthropology, which must come to an end immediately.

Statement in Solidarity with AAPI Communities against Hate

March 21, 2021

As members of the UNC Chapel Hill community, we condemn in the strongest terms the recent murders of eight people in Atlanta, six of them Asian and Asian-American women, as a hate crime promoted by the anti-Asian and misogynist rhetoric of White supremacy. Such xenophobic and misogynist ideologies associated with White settler colonialism in the United States date back at least to the anti-Chinese immigration laws of the 1880s, fueling the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during WWII, the exclusion of Asians from naturalized citizenship until the 1950s, and the verbal harassment and physical violence that has proliferated for decades and escalated over the past year.

We, members of the concentration on Race, Difference and Power within the Department of Anthropology, urge the University, civil society organizations, and local, state, and federal authorities to work to protect people of Asian descent and to ensure their safety on campus and in the United States. We also offer our deepest sympathies to the family members of those who have been murdered and assaulted, and we commit to stand in solidarity with people of Asian descent against the current and future attacks.

In love and solidarity we say their names: Daoyou Feng, 44; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Tan; Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Hyun J. Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; Soon C. Park, 74; Yong A. Yue, 63 and the sole survivor Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz, 30