For far too long we have all been witness to incessant murderous or otherwise violent assaults on the lives and dignity of Black Americans. We know that frequent exposure to traumatic events can lead to numbing of feelings, the cumulative effect of which can be an explosive response when one just can’t take it anymore.  The unending series of public displays of police violence on Black Americans reached just such a breaking point with the merciless killing of George Floyd. These events, combined with the disproportionate negative impact of the pandemic on the economic, medical, and psychological well-being of Black and other minority Americans expose the systemic and historic inequality deeply rooted in virtually all institutions of our civic life.

Beyond the incidents of physical violence, there is the daily drumbeat of entitled white assaults on doing virtually anything while Black.  It all adds up to a corrosive level of psychologically and physically harmful stress that white Americans are protected from by the irrational privilege of skin color, a fact that many white people refuse to recognize.  AIP stands with those who struggle to make right these systemic and historic wrongs.  Raising children, Black or white or otherwise, to be emotionally healthy and fulfilled adults is not possible when Black oppression, white supremacy, and xenophobia are normalized, unacknowledged, and even openly promoted at the highest levels of government and society. As an organization dedicated to supporting families and schools with the goal of raising healthy children in a just society, we recommit to taking a critical look at our own work – and our own selves – to be worthy of this opportunity for necessary and profound change.

Bob Kilkenny

Executive Director