On Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2018, ACAS expresses its solidarity with people living in African countries and in the African diaspora who were so brutally disparaged in the racist remarks made by President Trump on Jan 11, 2018. As concerned scholars of Africa, with friends, colleagues, and family members in these regions, we are outraged by his bigoted, offensive, and inaccurate characterizations. Sadly, such comments from the White House have become the norm. We demand that President Trump retract his statements and apologize for the harm he has caused.
To students and visitors who hail from the African continent and from diaspora countries, we reiterate that you are our valued friends and colleagues. Those of us who were born in the United States have a great deal to learn from you. Please continue to work with us to improve the tenor of American civic discourse and American understanding and appreciation of peoples on the African continent and in the African diaspora.
We also are dismayed at your Administrations’s plans to cut funding of UN Peacekeeping funds for more than a dozen African countries and for announced plans to cut funding for HIV-AIDS remediation in Africa as well as reducing contributions to the World Health Organization (WHO) as it coordinates research and action against Zika, Ebola, and malaria, diseases that threaten Haiti and parts of Africa as well as these United States.