In the wake of the murders by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick (murderd by white supremacists), Tony McDade in Tallahassee, Dion Johnson in Phoenix, Regis Korchinski-Paque in Toronto, Sean Reed in Indianapolis, and so many others, compounded by the violent suppression of protests by the State and the drastic inequalities that have caused COVID-19 to disproportionately affect Black Americans (and BIPOC in nations like Sweden, UK, Brazil and across the world), the steering committee of IONA expressly condemns the systemic racism that continues to produce the ongoing violence against Black people and other people of color, not only in the United States, but also in Canada, Australia, Europe, and wherever else it occurs.
Medieval studies--and especially early medieval studies--has always been a complicit and, often times, agentive partner in systemic racism. We have a responsibility to work actively to dismantle white supremacy and structural racism in our field and beyond. This work includes but is not limited to uplifting the voices and scholarship of Black and other scholars of color; listening to Black students and colleagues, especially when they express their frustration and anger with academic meritocracies that are built upon exclusion; challenging the structures that perpetuate racism in our departments, workspaces, and universities; engaging in anti-racist education; using our classrooms and syllabuses to dismantle long-held white supremacist ideologies and teach historical voices of color; financially supporting racial justice, and participating in politics at the local level.
IONA aims to be a collective space in which researchers, artists, teachers, and students can challenge the white supremacy of our field, and in that way, do our part to dismantle the structures of imperialism, colonialism, and racism. We stand in solidarity with the uprisings in the US and around the globe that are speaking truth to power about racial inequality and its historic ties to capitalism.
We pledge to devote substantial space in our programming of the next IONA conference to the work of our marginalized students and scholars, and in honor of the Black lives lost to police brutality and white supremacy we have donated the profit from merchandise sales at IONA Vancouver to the RaceB4Race conference series.