The Racial Reckoning project is an intervention. It provides an opportunity to challenge the long history of archival erasure of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, and immigrant voices. Through this project, we destabilize the tautology of the archives and disrupt exclusionary structures that reproduce the dominating historical narrative that thrives on forgetting and erasure. Through Racial Reckoning, we seek to gather fragments of stories and materials to compose new ways to listen, see, and care for our community.
We are seeking stories and documents that will allow us to build an archive of resistance, or survival, and of freedom dreaming. If we do not gather our stories, who will?
It is within this gathering space where we find the potential for developing a different kind of community here at Mason and laying the foundation for an important alternative to the traditional concept of archives. We see the work of the Center for Mason Legacies, including Racial Reckoning, as part of the extensive and ongoing movement towards necessary change which always begins at home.
Here at Mason that change occurs both inside and outside of the classroom. We hope you will join us on this journey by sharing your stories and incorporating these materials into your syllabi as pertinent to your courses and research.
April 20, 2021