The Anti-Racism Coalition: Uncensored
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Who are we?
June 2020
The Anti-Racism Coalition was created in June 2020 in response to the high-profile lynchings of Black people across the country by U.S law enforcement. Our coalition consists of medical students, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and staff.
As members of the healthcare workforce, we are particularly interested in naming and dismantling systems of racism to improve the health and well-being of all people. For us, this starts with making UC San Diego Health an anti-racist institution.
Being an anti-racist institution means that you support equity between the races through meaningful policies and actions. We do not believe that there is a such thing as being "not racist." The only choice ahead of us is to be racist or to be anti-racist. The first step is to acknowledge that racism is embedded in every structure in our society. We must name racism (and not use coded language like discrimination or implicit bias to make us more comfortable), we have to acknowledge that our institutions have been complicit in perpetuating anti-Black racism, and we have to center our actions and conversations on structural cases of racism and not fall into the trap of focusing on individual actions or behaviors as a significant cause of racism.
We reject reform as a solution to racism. Now is the time to abolish, not to reform, these systems of inequity. This means transforming the way we teach health care trainees so that we learn that racism, and not race, is a risk factor. It means that we support economic reparations to close the wealth gap between Black and White families, it means we support affirmative action, and that we support the abolition of institutions which promote inequity like prisons and the police. We stand united in refusing any incremental change and demanding transformational change to achieve anti-racist institutions and an anti-racist society.
As members of the healthcare workforce, we are particularly interested in naming and dismantling systems of racism to improve the health and well-being of all people. For us, this starts with making UC San Diego Health an anti-racist institution.
Being an anti-racist institution means that you support equity between the races through meaningful policies and actions. We do not believe that there is a such thing as being "not racist." The only choice ahead of us is to be racist or to be anti-racist. The first step is to acknowledge that racism is embedded in every structure in our society. We must name racism (and not use coded language like discrimination or implicit bias to make us more comfortable), we have to acknowledge that our institutions have been complicit in perpetuating anti-Black racism, and we have to center our actions and conversations on structural cases of racism and not fall into the trap of focusing on individual actions or behaviors as a significant cause of racism.
We reject reform as a solution to racism. Now is the time to abolish, not to reform, these systems of inequity. This means transforming the way we teach health care trainees so that we learn that racism, and not race, is a risk factor. It means that we support economic reparations to close the wealth gap between Black and White families, it means we support affirmative action, and that we support the abolition of institutions which promote inequity like prisons and the police. We stand united in refusing any incremental change and demanding transformational change to achieve anti-racist institutions and an anti-racist society.
Goals of this site
We hope that this site will serve as a tool to:
(1) Make the demands of Black medical students, residents, and fellows transparent
(2) Keep our institution accountable to being anti-racist
(3) Mobilize our community towards abolishing systems of racism with actionable tasks
(1) Make the demands of Black medical students, residents, and fellows transparent
(2) Keep our institution accountable to being anti-racist
(3) Mobilize our community towards abolishing systems of racism with actionable tasks
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
-Maya Angelou