Week 9 Blog: Kelsey Kim

Kesley Kim
Section A03


I chose to write my blog post on "Building a Culture of Solidarity: Racial Discourse, Black Lives Matter, and Indigenous Social Justice," by Santos F. Ramos because I liked how it expanded upon  "What Asian Americans are Bringing to Campus Movements for Racial Justice" by Mark Tseng Putterman on the question of where non-Black people of color fit into the Black Lives Matter movement. The two authors corroborate one another's points while diversifying the dialogue surrounding what solidarity should look like in individual, but collective efforts for social and racial justice.

Santos F. Ramos, an undergraduate student at Michigan State University, shares about a recent participation in a demonstration in which many students sat in the busiest intersection on campus to obstruct traffic to condemn racist police violence and hold a moment of silence for the death of Michael Brown. He then reflects upon his role as a non-Black Xicano in the situation. He specifically recalls that Stokely Carmichael once said: "that the destinies of Black and Latino peoples are intertwined."

Ramos explains that work for social change often loses sight for what is motivating such change. He acknowledges that there is a connotation associated with being an academic; that being an academic and activist means that one enters activist spaces to collect data, thus, minimizing the struggles of whole peoples. However, Ramos explains that "research" in the field as well as in the books is necessary to maintain a "cultural rhetorics approach"; having an understanding of the social and cultural context for a community's points of activism. I think that this perspective connects to what Huanvy Phan, an undergraduate student at Stanford University, said at the symposium about humanitarian work in Vietnam. She explained that charity work has commonly become exploitative and detached from the actual needs of the people. In the sense that activism can also be self-glorifying, I like that Ramos makes a point to acknowledge the importance of having in-depth knowledge about the history of a group of people in order to "[situate] beliefs and practices within the cultural contexts from which they derive" (Ramos).

Secondly, Ramos dives into points of tension surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement and non-Black people of color. I think that the point of mentioning cultural rhetorics is to explain how #AllLivesMatter or subsequent hashtag movements highlighting non-Black efforts for social change are the product of a lack of understanding. The creators of the BLM comment on these subsequent movements to say that while other struggles for change are valid, using Black Lives Matter wording, these other groups essentially commandeer the BLM for their own benefit, taking away from the BLM movement. Ramos uses the juxtaposition between hashtags like #NativeLivesMatter and #AsianLivesMatter and #APIs4BlackLives to illustrate what solidarity should look like. While the former appropriates the BLM narrative, the ladder puts Asians and Pacific Islanders in partnership with the movement without deleting the acknowledgment of Black-specific struggles and origins of this movement.

I think the big idea of the article is that people of color need to re-think how our individual motions for change are all intertwined with another. Solidarity is more than supporting other motions for social or racial justice, but validating each through action. The larger picture is that all people of color have all been historically exploited and oppressed and that while experiences differ from one another, individual movements shouldn't take away from one another. Productive solidarity can be achieved through "relation organizing" which is "building relationships both inside and outside of academia, both within and beyond" one community, and constantly view one's own goals for social change in relativity to those of others. Furthermore, non-Black people of color have a responsibility to address sentiments of anti-blackness within their communities and become more educated in the context of behind where a specific social struggle is derived from.

Question: 

Can Ramos's definition of solidarity be achieved between Blacks and Indigenous people? Or are the two movements mutually exclusive due to the different end goals? What would a cohesive narrative look like?

Resources:

[Lives Matter Poster][image]. (n.d.). [Photograph]. Retrieved  from file:///Users/KelseyKim/Desktop/c1d334b296a6ebcd191faf587c20fd53--all-lives-matter-black-lives-matter.jpg

Native Americans and Africans are Brothers]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://s3-us-west
1.amazonaws.com/donorbox/froala_images/6eedde35-83cb-4c40-9c87-5b6f832d39d4.jpg

     Ramos, S. F. (2016, April 20). Building a Culture of Solidarity: Racial Discourse, Black Lives Matter, and Indigenous Social Justice. Retrieved November 17, 2017, from http://enculturation.net/building-a-culture-of-solidarity