I have absolutely nothing to add to the discussions occurring today, but I really want white archaeologists to sit with the looting discourse.

I've RTed a couple of Tweets that have brought up the disconnect between white people angry about "looting" during these protests but not about the literal looting that they implicitly or explicitly support, day to day: from museums and knowledge, to land and lives.

Archaeology is full of racism and anti-Blackness, but I also want archaeologists particularly to think about the ways in which archaeology, as a perceived-as-white discipline, is seen as "acceptable" looting and how that adds to the anti-Blackness and racism in looting discourse

...particularly when archaeology/museum curating is also often seen as not just acceptable looting, but literally as "saving" artifacts from their places of origin.

Archaeologists and museums loot and hoard artifacts, but this is never referred to as "looting" and "hoarding". Protesters are redistributing wealth and resources, but this is seen immediately as "looting" and "hoarding".

Obviously this is very low on the list of things to be thinking about and discussing right now, but I want archaeologists to consider how our discipline adds more fuel to the fire of racism and anti-Blackness, particularly in the most inconspicuous ways.

We also need to think about how, within our field, when we DO talk about looting, it is often a racialised discussion. We hear about grave robbing and looting, but when are we talking about the biggest perpetrators of these acts (western institutions and archaeologists!)

basically I don't want to hear any archaeologist complain about "looting" going on during these protests when our entire discipline is basically the formalised practice of looting.