President's Report

As I write this, we are just beyond the halfway mark of the year 2020. The wishful tagline as we entered into the New Year had been along the hopeful lines of “desiring to see with more clarity,” playing, of course, on the notion of the optometric ideal of 20/20 vision. But in the first half of the year, it is our many blind spots that some of us are paradoxically seeing more clearly, both collectively and individually.

While a global pandemic continues to unfold its sickly bloom — which has become politicized, shining light upon the lethal pre-existing racial inequities embedded in skewed infection rates and demographics of at-risk essential workers — there is the ongoing, simultaneous, and relentless fight for Black lives. This multicentury fight in the U.S., while known intimately by Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), continues in 2020 as it does in every moment of every year. Yet, it is only periodically seen and remembered by many White folks, the privileged blind spots that can take the shape of forgetting, not seeing, or otherwise being “too busy” to pay attention.

Recently having more time on hand and the same four walls within which to spend it, many have lost the “too busy” mindset to not see the repetitive nature of deadly violations, assaults, and murders of BIPOC, highlighted by the tragic murder of George Floyd, and have become more engaged and activated towards seeking social justice. 2020 continues to cast light on and offer space within which to clearly see the repetitions of racialized, life-and-death inequities rooted in the current and inherited structures of our national psyche-soma. A primary question now emerging in this space for many is: Will I take on more, clearly seeing my own personal role in blindly maintaining these inherited structures?

I am a White, mostly cis-gendered, gay man who came of age just beyond the zenith of the HIV/AIDS-epidemic and its ravages, and I am NCSPP's President-Elect this year. I often take my positio