The Latinx/Latine community at UMass Amherst is a relatively small number of faculty, staff, and students This statement has been developed through an organic grassroots process and has been embraced by the members of the campus Latinx/Latine community and allies who have signed it. (Note: You can add your signature by going to this link)

We unite in condemning the attacks against our Black family at UMass Amherst - including racist emails, racist verbal assaults, and racist graffiti.  We wish to emphasize our solidarity with, and love for our Black family.  

The racist email sent before finals was intended to present an illusion of widespread support by the Latinx/Latine community of the messages of white supremacy and anti-Black hatred in the emails. We refuse to allow anti-Black racists to appropriate the voice of our community through yet another white supremacist practice that violently produces community effacement, silencing, and gaslighting. We, members of the Latinx community, extend our love for, and solidarity with, our Black family. We reject racist hate and white supremacy.  

Many Latinx/Latine people come from communities that have Black/African heritage. Deliberate oblivion or unwitting ignorance about this fact is yet another reflection of how the U.S. and, in fact, hemispheric, racialization continues to work in this country and in Latin American nation-states through the minds and actions of white-supremacist perpetrators. African culture has been kept alive, in many Latinx/Latine communities through Cimarrones, Garifunas, and Quilombos – centuries-old communities of Black people who overthrew the bonds of slavery and established liberated African-based societies throughout the Caribbean, Central, and South America. African culture is alive, vibrant, and lovingly embraced throughout Latin America and can be found in our art, dance, food, journalism, music, literature, medicine, pedagogical practices, political organizations, science, story telling, theater, and more. 

As we express our solidarity with and love for our Black family, we recognize that one of the organized manifestations of the social disease of white supremacy is to sew divisiveness across the non-white communities affected by it alike. The best way for us to eradicate white supremacy in our Latinx/Latine communities is through our own reeducation and through vocal and proud affirmation of love for the Black presence in many of us, as well as in our communities, for our Black heritage, and for the African culture infused throughout our communities. Finally, we affirm the stance and steps toward change as outlined in the statement published by our fellow community members from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies.