Black Lives Matter Now & Always

A message from the Chair of the NAAFA Board of Directors

February 2023

George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis  on May 25, 2020. In the days and weeks that followed, people took to the streets across the United States and around the world to protest Mr. Floyd’s murder and the long history of violence directed at Black people and Black communities by police in the United States. As calls for change swept the world, businesses and organizations–many of whom had never publicly addressed systemic racism or police violence– began aligning themselves with the phrase Black Lives Matter. As a civil rights organization, we at NAAFA felt that it was important to put out a statement, too. 

When NAAFA drafted our own Black Lives Matter statement that summer, we were a small board (only three of us) and we were working with a new group of volunteers– the Future of NAAFA Committee– who had formed after our 50th Anniversary Conference the summer before to help us create a path for NAAFA in the organizations second half-century.  Our statement in 2020 urged fat community, especially white and other non-Black people, to examine their own views about race and to educate themselves about white supremacy. We asked people to think about how anti-fatness and anti-Blackness are linked. We asked our fat community and allies to be allied with racial justice community by giving time and money to Black-led organizations doing important anti-racism work. 

Our 2020 BLM statement made a clear declaration of our opposition to racism (the statement was literally titled “NAAFA Opposes Racism”). But we made the same mistake in our statement that many other groups made at the time by not delineating what we would do culturally or systematically as an organization. We asked y’all to change without telling you how we would change. We knew we wanted to back our statement up with action, and we did follow our statement with action that changed NAAFA for the better and, I believe, made NAAFA more welcoming to Black people and more oriented to centering Black people and other People of Color in our work. I believe our actions have also made it more clear to people of all racial backgrounds that fat liberation work must include work for racial justice. But looking back from the vantage point of 2023, I wish we’d been more clear about the what and how of showing our commitment to BLM.

NAAFA has changed a lot since the summer of 2020 when it comes to anti-racism and intersectionality. When I took over as Board Chair in January 2021, it was the first time the Board had been chaired by a Black person since Phyllis Warr served for several months as Interim Board Chair years before. I came to the position with a professional background in Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI), and with a reputation in fat community for speaking often and unapologetically about race and racism. I was used to talking publicly about race, and people were used to me talking publicly about race. That is a different kind of NAAFA leadership than ever before. 

But no single person is evidence of NAAFA’s commitment to anti-racism. Our whole team has to be committed. And we are. Our board is now 10 members and is 50% People of Color, including three Black women, making it the most racially diverse board in NAAFA history. Many of our board members have been trained in anti-oppression approaches, and we will undergo further training together this year. Board members compile Anti-Racism Resources on a monthly basis for our newsletter and website to support community-wide learning. Our community grants program funded several Black-led projects in 2021 and 2022, and we’ve financially supported other orgs in producing Black-centered events. Our own programming regularly features Black activists, artists, scholars, and influencers, and they are paid for their labor. 

Many of the organizations that put out Black Lives Matter statements in 2020 look exactly the same as they did in 2020, both in terms of who is doing the work and in terms of how they are doing the work. That’s not so at NAAFA, and my hope is always that the actions we did undertake show to our community. If someone were to ask you, “Do Black lives matter to NAAFA?” I hope it is apparent that the answer is a clear and resounding, “Yes!

But even if you agree that we’ve come a long way as an intersectional fat liberation organization committed to anti-racism, we still have work to do either way. Racism is never “solved.” Anti-racism is an ongoing, lifetime commitment. NAAFA has to stay committed, too. Always. 

In solidarity,

Tigress Osborn, NAAFA Board Chair

 Additional learning: 

NAAFA Webinar Series 2020 - Leah Vernon “Unashamed: Musings of a Fat, Black Muslim”

NAAFA Webinar Series 2020 - Dr. Sabrina Strings “The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia”

NAAFA Webinar Series 2022 - Da’Shaun Harrison “Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness”