The Association for the Anthropology of Policy (ASAP) condemns the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and so many others at the hands of racist state violence. We maintain that BLACK LIVES MATTER, and we support those mobilizing against racist violence and injustice. We recognize that BLM is embedded in an ecology of many movements and struggles, and we hope this statement to be in coalition with all actions working to end systemic/structural racism, appropriation, and oppression.

As anthropologists of policy, we are all too aware of the many ways in which state policies, in all domains, including policing, produce multi-generational racialized violence. We demand policies, procedures, and practices that both recognize the racist violence of the past and ensure equality and justice for this and future generations. Institutional racism, in all its forms, must be challenged in every way possible, and the centuries-long subjugation and oppression of Black communities, and other communities of color, must stop. Political leadership must respond in ways that promote racial justice rather than continuing to be part of the problem.

As scholars of policy, we commit to challenging racism actively in our research, teaching, and our writing, and to ensuring that Black voices, and the voices of other communities of color are heard by policy makers everywhere. ASAP pledges to identify how our own work and practices--our organization, the institutions where we work, teach, and study, and in our anthropological research--reproduce systemic racism and to develop ways of countering these going forward. We commit to examining critically how we, as an association, can support anti-racism and more explicitly counter racialized injustice and inequality going forwards. We hold ourselves as scholars accountable to this task.