As a committee of Black, Indigenous, and people of color graduate student workers, we strive towards these standards in our work to build a more racially just labor movement as well as in our internal organizing.
- Recognizing intersections of identity. We acknowledge that in addition to our shared identity as Black students, Indigenous students, and graduate students of color at USC, we also come from diverse experiences across gender, class, student status, and more. Drawing from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s idea of intersectionality, we commit ourselves to understanding how these experiences shape our understanding of race, how we articulate kinship with other organizations or community groups of color, and how we organize within ourselves across these differences.
- Go beyond traditional diversity models of engagement. We are against traditional diversity models that rely on tokenism and exceptionalism to define our experiences. We strive to create a more radical model for organizing for racial justice that does not repeat the status quo.
- Recognition of the value of racialized labor. While our struggles as graduate students of color may occasionally overlap with fellow white graduate students, we want to emphasize that our racialized labor specifically codes our experiences in the academy. By racialized labor, we mean that we endure differential treatment from our colleagues, faculty, advisors, and supervisors due to our racial identity. We are also disproportionately more susceptible to abuses of power and other ill treatment due to conscious and unconscious biases. These experiences lead to the devaluation of our labor, time, and energy. In order for us to achieve dignity in the work that we do as graduate students of color, we insist that the academy recognizes the role that race plays in the valuation of our labor.
- Acknowledge the complexities of race in our organizational makeup. We recognize that race is a social construction, and yet, it has historically defined our experiences as people of color. As racial definition continues to change in a globalizing world, we want to hold space for the different needs and experiences of graduate students of color in the academy, and to allow these experiences to shape the work we do. We want to be aware of the racial identities that are especially marginalized, underrepresented, and overlooked, such as Black and Indigenous graduate student workers. We are committed to creating a safe space for the most marginalized racial identities among us, and to be open to how our work might change with growing conversations about race in the world.
BIPOC Committee Projects
- Abolition campaign
- Community Outreach (organizations, student groups, scholars, local communities, neighborhood communities that we can partner with/support)
- Advocacy campaigns with international students