African American Policy Forum

The African American Policy Forum (AAPF) is a social justice think tank focused on issues of gender and diversity. AAPF seeks to build bridges between arts, activism, and the academy in order to address structural inequality and systemic oppression. AAPF develops and promotes frameworks and strategies that address a vision of racial justice that embraces the intersections of race, gender, class, and the array of barriers that disempower those who are marginalized in society.

Seeking to raise awareness for black female victims of police brutality and anti-Black violence in the United States, AAPF released a report entitled "Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality against Black Women." Say Her Name documents stories of Black women who have been killed by police, shining a spotlight on forms of police brutality often experienced disproportionately by women of color. The report also provides analytical frames for understanding Black women’s experiences and broadens dominant conceptions of who experiences state violence and what it looks like. In February 2015, the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) coined the hashtag #SayHerName in an effort to create a large social media presence alongside existing racial justice campaigns, such as #BlackLivesMatter and #BlackGirlsMatter. Since 2015, #SayHerName has seen global use to call attention to the continued lack of Black women’s narratives in discussions of state violence.

The African American Policy Forum (AAPF) was co-founded in 1996 by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia Law School and leading authority in the area of Civil Rights and Black feminist legal theory; and Luke Charles Harris, Professor of Political Science at Vassar College and leading authority in the field of Critical Race Theory. The Policy Forum was developed as part of an ongoing effort to promote women’s rights in the context of struggles for racial justice.

The African American Policy Forum’s mission is to utilize new ideas and innovative perspectives to transform public discourse and policy. The Policy Forum promotes frameworks and strategies that address a vision of racial justice that embraces the intersections of race, gender, class, and the array of barriers that disempower those who are marginalized in society. Bridging art, activism, and academic discourse in their work, AAPF is dedicated to advancing and expanding racial justice, gender equality, and the indivisibility of all human rights, both in the U.S. and internationally.

#WhyWeCantWait is an AAPF initiative that was publicly announced on June 17, 2014 with the issuing of an open letter sent to former President Barack Obama, signed by over 1,400 women of color entitled “Why We Can’t Wait: Women of Color Urge Inclusion in ‘My Brother’s Keeper.’” In this letter, women of color questioned how attempts to address the challenges facing males of color – without integrating a comparable focus on the complex lives of girls and women who live and struggle together in the same families, homes, schools, and neighborhoods – advances the interests of the community as a whole. The women who signed this letter share a commitment to the expansion of “My Brother’s Keeper” (MBK) and all other national youth interventions to include an explicit focus on the structural conditions that negatively impact all youth of color.

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