Statement of Anti-Racist Solidarity
As the Anne Arundel Community College Organizing Committee of Maryland Community
Colleges United, we express our solidarity with AACC Black faculty, staff, and students, as well
as the nationwide movement to confront and expose all forms of racism, white supremacy, and
inequity, because Black lives matter. Black lives must matter, if human lives matter at all.
We recognize AACC President Dawn Lindsay’s open letter calling on us all to support this effort,
and her expression of personal commitment to this mission. In her words:
I will work with the vice presidents to push the envelope on equity and belonging:
removing barriers to access for our students, strengthening trust among AACC
employees, creating and rewriting policies.
As faculty, we know that we have a responsibility and obligation to notice and take concrete
steps to remove all barriers to access. We pledge to be an active part of the creation of policies
at AACC that accomplish this aim. Furthermore, we understand that encouraging and engaging
our Black colleagues at every step of this process is critical to its success and that we must
continually revisit the work being done to ensure equity.
President Lindsay also mentioned the need to “address racism throughout our curriculum.” As
we approach a new semester and are re-examining the effectiveness of teaching during the
national and global pandemic, this becomes a pivotal moment for change. We recognize that
textbooks still often fall short of presenting U.S. history and present-day American society
completely and truthfully. The immense role of Black people in shaping our nation and the
oppression they have suffered throughout our history have not been adequately investigated
and discussed in our classrooms. As teachers, we must aggressively correct these deficiencies
by identifying and incorporating supplemental literature and materials, reviewing the content of
textbooks, and recommending revisions to texts. With the full support of President Lindsay and
her administration, these actions can begin in earnest immediately.
We support strengthening efforts of the AACC administration to recruit and hire Black faculty.
Just as our students must see themselves reflected in the curriculum, so should our faculty,
which should be as diverse as our county and whose labor should be equally valued, respected,
and compensated. Regardless of student demographics, Black faculty are a necessary part of
equity and inclusion.
We acknowledge that Anne Arundel County has not always made it clear that the education of
Black minds has mattered, and its failure to do so has made everybody’s education matter less.
When AACC began holding classes in 1961, the county’s schools were still racially segregated.
Wiley H. Bates High School in Annapolis served Black families from all over our large county,
but the Anne Arundel County public school system did not integrate until ordered by federal
courts in 1966, twelve years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the case of
Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
Mindful of our county’s shameful history of racial discrimination and in the spirit of reconciliation,
we, the adjunct faculty of Anne Arundel Community College, in solidarity with the college’s fulltime faculty, staff, and administration, pledge our commitment to an anti-racist mission in 2020
and into the future. We pledge further to commit ourselves to AACC’s vision--as outlined by
President Lindsay--to become “a premiere learning community that transforms lives to create an
engaged and inclusive society.”