week 9 -Alan Sani

Alan Sani

A03

Week 9

"Building a Culture of Solidarity: Racial Discourse, Black lives Matter, and Indigenous Social Justice" One of this week’s readings talks about some of the problematic ways that non-black communities have tried to stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. The most interesting thing to me about this topic is that these other ethnic groups don't see their mistake in their efforts. Minority groups do not always understand that trying to include themselves and their own problems within the BLM movement can cause them to forget the bases of the movement. The article acknowledges the people who started the movement and the intended message and also sites an example of people from other communities changing the name of the movement to “our lives matter” or “native lives matters”. These efforts are more inclusive but in the process they ignore the unique adversity and struggles that black people face. As a person of color, reading this article helps me realize that the idea of standing in solidarity is a lot harder to execute than it may seem. Although there are similarities in the struggles of many different communities it is important to find a way to support ally communities in a way that doesn’t ignore their problems or try to equate them. This is an important idea for me to consider because coming from the Indonesian Muslim community I feel like a minority group within the Asian American Minority.  Because of this I have found community for myself in cultural and academic organizations where that I don’t identify with. It is important for me to attentive to issues like these.

 Question: How can a white person stand in solidarity with communities of color? 

These are Asian Americans that are showing their support for the black lives matter movement withut trying to turn the attention to themselves.