#StepUpSAS Anti-Racism Project

2020 was undoubtedly a time when the world woke up.

The Black Lives Matter Protests that were reignited after the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless other Black lives in the summer of 2020 shone a spotlight on systems of state injustice, police brutality and white supremacy. While the epicenter of social activism was borne out of American racial politics, these conversations also incited a global conversation about anti-Black racism and prejudice. In any effort to contribute to the empowered efforts made by Black organizers, folks all around the world began to think of ways to mobilize their communities into change.

Some banded together to take to the streets in resistance to violent police states, others toppled colonial statues and called for an intensive decolonization of urban landscapes, many were driven to digital canvassing and virtual anti-racism training. Others chose to begin long-delayed conversations with their family members about their own deep-seated racism. What was clear is that in the face of egregious injustice, support, community care and unwavering (com)passion was able to materialize outside of state-actors.

Being geographically detached from the warm realities of the US protests may have posed as a barrier for some, but for us, the #StepUpSAS Team, it provided a unique opportunity to finally instrumentalize the voices of folk who had been silenced for so long.

#StepUpSAS was a project that was came together in June of 2020

when a group of alumni from the Singapore American School decided to reflect upon the ways in which their formative education deleteriously perpetuated modalities of anti-Black racism, classism, colonialism, misogyny, amongst other things. The #StepUpSAS Team, comprising of Black and brown students that graduated at different stages, decided that structural change had to be implemented at their high school to make it a more equitable, inclusive and supportive space for marginalized communities.

I brought together this small group as we encapsulated a range of experiences at our high school but were all impacted by structures of white supremacy that the school upheld. Our Black team members were disproportionately affected by these systems and felt like this project was a way to platform their experiences and visions for change. Our goal was to begin a conversation about race that had long been buried, suppressed, and erased by the “color-blind” multiculturalism of our school and of Singapore’s society at large. We wanted this project to be run by students and for students.

With this sentiment in mind, we crafted and disseminated an Anti-Racism survey that asked past and current students to share their experiences surrounding racism and discrimination during their time at the Singapore American School. Over the course of two weeks, we received over 250 responses from alumni and current students, ranging from the graduating classes of 1998 to 2023. Many of our respondents detailed experiences that were personal, traumatic and ones they had never shared before. The wounds of racism cut deep, but we were determined to honor these stories and forge a safe path of healing. It is this spirit of healing that we carried forth in our project.

In the two weeks following the publication of our survey, we organized, analyzed and coded the data from the various participant responses with the intention to share our findings with our high school administration. These findings would also inform a detailed list of curricular reforms that we demanded to be implemented in the school.

After an initial conversation with upper-level administration and the Board of Trustees, we found that the school was still not fully committed to taking accountability of the ways in which they perpetuated white supremacy, colonialism and injustice. From this point, we decided to shift our focus away from the school and more with current students and alumni to craft a list of demands. These list of demands were aggregated by the #StepUpSAS Team based on our survey findings. Major points of reform included creating space spaces for Black students and students of color to talk about their experiences with race, expand school curriculum to include Black History, Indigenous history, immersive cultural and sociological pedagogy of Singapore’s indigenous, colonial and local history, diversify faculty and administration to include more professionals of color, and implementing mandatory and reoccurring anti-racism training for students and faculty members.

Where we’re at now.

After months of discussions with current students and Singapore American School’s DEI Team, the school has taken on board some of our demands and are implementing them from kindergarten to high school. The DEI team’s action steps for the school year 2020-2021 are the following: an all-school professional learning program, a DEI exchange in collaboration with student groups such as the Black Student Union and the LGBTQ Alliance, a mentorship program for faculty of color, and a board statement on diversity and inclusion which our team also has a hand in crafting.

Our work wouldn’t have been possible for the countless Black organizers, activists and scholars that laid the foundation for social justice. We also honor the other school reform groups that have begun in Singapore who we were inspired by too. The fearless leadership of these groups have pushed us to move forward even at times where our work seemed fruitless.

Though our project was just a stepping stone in a long journey of decolonization and unlearning racism, we are grateful for how we were able to bring communities of people together across borderlines. We will always be committed to diversity, equity, reform and reconstruction and #StepUpSAS is an empowering example of how change can be mobilized in the face of grave injustice.

We look forward to continuing this journey further.

#StepUpSAS Team