UMass Boston's Anti-Racism Grants Are Back, Stronger Than Ever

Our Evil Overlords at the Administration won't give us MORE money for exciting anti-racism initiatives. How dare they, with the wonderful work we've been doing?

Our favorite funding opportunity is back - UMass Boston’s anti-racism grant program.

It started in 2022 with a $25,000 pool of funding allocated by the Provost’s office in consultation with the Faculty Staff Union to support anti-racism activities for faculty and librarians. It may not be a lot of money, but given the perpetual financial crunch we’re in as a public institution with less than stellar track record when it comes to budget, every penny counts.

You’ll be glad to hear that the 2023-2024 agreement increased the funding pool to $45,000. We had high hopes that collective bargaining would help further increase the amount of these funds. Well, due to the unique combination of bureaucracy and incompetence that plagues both parties, the bargaining never happened. Too bad. But even $45K can fund a lot of anti-racism goodies. Besides, now we know why the university can’t afford to implement proctored Math placement. Something’s gotta give. And if the critical social justice movement taught us anything, is that tests are racist and unproctored testing screws everyone equitably.

We hope that the newly funded proposals would again give us inspiration and help us reach collective liberation, intersectional justice and the abolition of western civilization just like recently funded proposals that included, but were not limited to, the following:

• “Teaching in Freedom”: Human Rights, Racial Justice, and Collective Empowerment: Two events that highlight our emphasis on centering questions of race, gender, sexuality, human rights, and collective empowerment. The proposal includes a discussion on “teaching in freedom,” a collective learning process that centers IndigXnous BlXck, QueXR and LatinX ways of knowing. Remember this, STEM instructors, and abandon the cis-hetero-white-patriarchal Eurocentric scientific method.

• Sustaining Anti-Racist Agendas Through Research & Writing Support for Faculty of Color: Qualitative research on the ongoing faculty of color writing group to better understand the writing routines and needs of faculty of color who are, as we all know, a monolith whose routines are needs are all one and the same, and are collectively so fundamentally different than those of white faculty that it’s almost like two different species. It will also fund a multi-day summer writing retreat for UMB faculty of color only, because anti-discrimination laws are Eurocentric and bigoted, especially if whites are being discriminated against. It applies not only to faculty but also, maybe especially, to students as the next proposal tells us:

• Teaching Writing Through Anti-Racist Practices: We know that asking students of color to read and write standard English is racist and bigoted per our friend Asao Inoue at Arizona State University. According to Inoue, a successful professional, wishing to become successful professionals in a racist, white supremacist system makes said students sellouts. Some even say forcing standard English constitutes spiritual murder! We will provide anti-racist professional development to teachers and tutors of writing, engaging English faculty across levels in reflecting on, rethinking, and transforming their course materials. Attendees will not only learn about research in anti-racist writing instruction but will also be provided space and time to revise course materials away from any embedded assumptions of white supremacist language practices and toward maximizing linguistic justice. Communicating effectively in writing is a secondary goal.

• A Teach-In and Speak-Out For the Times: Pathways to Social Repair and Campus Transformation: Award winning educator and writer, Felicia Rose Chavez will read from The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom and discuss the twin goals of anti-racism in education - decentering whiteness and decentering authority (except the authority of the woke cult). 

• NTT Labor Based Grading Project: There is growing recognition that traditional approaches to student evaluation can reproduce racialized hierarchies. So, instead of trying to fix the root causes like the broken K-12 system or socio-economical disparities, a group of our NTT colleagues are researching grading contracts, a novel approach to evaluation advanced by rhetoric and composition scholar Asao Inoue at Arizona State University. Oh, wait! It’s Asao again! We love us some Asao. Grading contracts kill two birds with one stone: We don’t have to do the tedious grading work and we reduce our failure rates by not requiring our students to learn to write properly, while giving them a sense of perpetual victimhood. Win-win.

There are many many more that we already talked about.

Honestly, we think our ideas were better, especially the one that called for abolishing the university.