Anti-Racism Task Force to Host Open Meeting

David Marker and Adrian Coles, Anti-Racism Task Force Co-Chairs

The ASA Anti-Racism Task Force will host an open meeting at JSM August 10 at 12:00 p.m. The meeting will be led by the Anti-Racism Task Force co-chairs, David Marker and Adrian Coles, and focus on the mission and vision for the task force, steps taken to date, and selected interim findings.

This will be an opportunity for any JSM attendee to contribute to the task force’s work by suggesting additional factors to consider and/or comment on the work to date. For those ASA members who are unable to attend, preliminary findings can be found on the task force’s webpage. Also on the webpage is a link to a form for submitting comments.

The task force was created by the ASA Board of Directors late last year with a mission to do the following:

• Review the association’s infrastructure, policies, allocation of resources, and procedures to determine if implicit or explicit racism exist and how the existence of such conflicts with the association’s position on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, harming marginalized groups.
• Assess the communications and activities of all ASA groups that provide services, benefits, or support to key stakeholders for the presence of racism. Key stakeholders include the association’s members, other associations, and the public.
• Catalog the ways through which statistics and data science can contribute to racism and propose mechanisms through which the association will inform the public on the responsible use of statistics and data science to support anti-racist systems and institutions within our society.