Black Thriving Initiative

UCI Black Thriving Initiative

UCI Black Thriving Initiative recognizes and responds to anti-Blackness as an existential threat to our mission as public research university. In depriving Black people of their full participation in society and in university life, anti-Blackness compromises UCI's capacity to educate, discover, create and heal. It therefore demands a whole university response. This response relies on each member of our campus community linking their future to the success of Black students, faculty and staff as well as alumni and communities served by UCI.

Anti-Blackness:

An Existential Threat to Our Mission

  • Negatively impacts community and sense of belonging
  • Compromises capacity to discover, innovate, and serve
  • Contradicts role as a public research university serving all

National Imperative:

We Must Be In This Together

  • Leverage role as a grant public research university
  • Dismantle anti-Black sentiment as an institutional imperative
  • Advance understanding of the Black experience and drivers of well-being

Inclusive Excellence:

Accelerating Our Momentum

  • Builds on Inclusive Excellence Action Plan
  • Extends Confronting Extremism Program
  • Aligns with UC Regents Principles Against Intolerance

Resources for Confronting Anti-Blackness

Anti-Blackness refers to actions or behaviors that minimize, marginalize or devalue the full participation of Black people in our university life. Such actions may not be maliciously motivated or even rise to the level of a policy violation. The accumulated impact affects how Black undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and staff community experience belonging at UCI and can negatively affect how they learn, discover and work. In robbing them of their full membership, anti-Blackness distorts the research, teaching and service mission of UCI as a public university serving the state of California while reaching across the country and world.

Programming

Untapped Potential with Arabian Prince

Arabian Prince is a founding member of the legendary rap group NWA, which was elected to the Rock and Roll ...

Toward Racial Justice Conversation – May 25, 2021

Last year's murder of George Floyd focused attention on confronting systemic racism and promoting racial justice as a ...

UCI African American Studies Panel

Meet a few of the professors in the Department of African American Studies at the UCI School of ...