“It won’t stop all incidents,” said Matthew Pinchinat, Guilderland’s director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. “But it will show we do take them seriously.”

Merton D. Simpson has always had a sense of his African ancestry and his Blackness.
He was born in Charleston, South Carolina and raised in Brooklyn so he says he’s always known the deep divisions in the United States.

We have to teach ourselves to understand the beauty of cultures that are unlike our own.

After a lengthy and stunningly frank conversation about racism in the Guilderland schools, the school board here added a full-time post for an administrator who will oversee diversity, equity, and inclusion in the district.

Marie Wiles, Superintendent of Schools, Guilderland

A handful of Rensselaerville residents requested that the town board condemn display of the Confederate battle flag, a popular conservative symbol intertwined with racism, but the resolution that will be introduced next month seems unlikely to go through. 

The question we need to address here in Guilderland and as Americans at large is: How do we create a collective memory that is shared?

“The whole key to this is to get community involvement so that we foster that trust and fairness that I think we’re losing right now nationwide. It just opens up that dialogue so we’re all kind of on the same page, solving our problems together,” said Guilderland Police Chief Daniel McNally of the newly formed committee that will carry out the governor’s order to reform and reinvent the town’s police department.

Setting aside symbols of antagonism and looking for common ground is the best way forward.

Lisa DeGroff, Westerlo Republican, Committee Chairperson