Week 9: Charlene Chan, Section 2

Week 9: Solidarity Movements

Charlene Chan

Section 2

May 28, 2017

Week 9: Solidarity Movements

This week’s readings, “Building a Culture of Solidarity: Racial Discourse, Black Lives Matter, and Indigenous Social Justice” by Ramos and “So Our History Doesn’t Become Your Future: The Local and Global Politics of Coalition Building Post September 11th” by Naber took a look at solidarity across different groups within social justice movements. In particular, these two articles addressed the climate within the Black Lives Matter Movement and post-911 coalitions, respectively. 

In the first article, Ramos examines the role of non-black people of color in the Black Lives Matter movement. Taking note of the our in “our struggle for both respective and collective liberation” (2), he comments on the tendency of how phrases like “Native Lives Matter” and “Asian Lives Matter” fight for media attention within the BLM space, and therefore is counter-effective to the solidarity that is needed for a movement like this. This reminded me of the times that I had heard Asian classmates say things like “But what about Asian lives? We experience racism too”, or “Nobody cares about Asians” in response to the sweeping support of BLM within activist spaces. While I recognize that the Asian narrative in social justice movements have largely been reduced to identity politics and discussion of the model minority stereotype, this does not give us the right to steal the spotlight and momentum that the BLM has gained.

In the second article, the line “‘I am a citizen,’ often implies that, ‘I am not the immigrant enemy’” (228) really stood out to me. I have noticed that this is a recurrent theme within minority groups that have been targeted within America across history. During the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the resulting anti-Chinese sentiment that is still prevalent today, many American-born Chinese and Chinese-Americans emphasize their Americanness as if to push the negativity that is associated with being Chinese away. In a similar vein of thought, during WWII, Japanese and Japanese-Americans oftentimes stressed their patriotism in an effort to divert accusations of espionage and other common accusations of the time. These efforts to buy into a perception of non-otherness serve to assimilate these groups and push the negative repercussions of prejudice onto the members of the group that have been “left behind”, so to say. These remaining others are thrown under the bus and left to be targeted. 

Question:

How do we as activists share the platform, rather than fighting with each other for a voice and space?

References:

Zhang, A. (n.d.). Yellow Peril and Black Power. Retrieved May 28, 2017, from http://www.marginsmagazine.com/2016/08/19/yellow-peril-and-black-power/