Author Roxane Gay, Student Activists Convene at Global Racial Justice Summit
In an era when those in power speak of racial justice but do little except turn a profit, the fight for change must move beyond rhetoric, author Roxane Gay told participants at the Global Racial Justice Summit, an event organized by student activists and held at Rutgers-Newark.
“For awhile now, when thinking about race, what I’ve really been thinking about is the wide gulf between words and action…How do we bring into alignment what we say, what we mean and what we do?” asked Gay, the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers. It was a question she posed throughout her keynote address.
The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, founded in 2020 with a $15 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, is a collaborative research hub for faculty whose work addresses racism and social inequality. Last year, it created the Fellows in Racial Justice Learning Community for undergraduate students, whose work was showcased at the event, held at Express Newark art and design center.
Themes of the summit were “Fighting for the Now, Hopeful for the Future” and “Education not Incarceration.” The emphasis was on racial justice efforts across three Rutgers campuses–Camden, Newark and New Brunswick–-including those that addressed inequities at the university.