Cross-Racial Solidarity Formations as Political Vehicles

• In Event: 20861 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: Collective Identity and Solidarity

Abstract

This project builds on scholarship that questions the idea that identity is modular and static (e.g. Bracey 2016; Gamson 1995) and invites us to think about how identities and political views co-constitute each other in movement spaces. In a broader sense, this project creates the opportunity for a critical solidarity study that investigates solidarity practitioners and the assumptions underlying solidarity. It asks – what does solidarity mean, how is it enacted, and what systems make it possible or impossible? More specifically, how have formations fighting for Black liberation, whose membership is primarily not Black, practiced solidarity, and what can their strategies tell us more broadly about racialization processes and movement longevity?

To address these questions, the study examines qualitative data from 15 formations across the United States. To qualify for the study, the formation needed, at its outset, to foreground Black liberation or the eradication of anti-Blackness in its mission statement, and for the majority of its membership to not identify as Black. The majority of the formations included in the study have memberships that identify as either Asian-, East Asian-, Southeast Asian or South Asian-American. This paper finds that cross-racial solidarity formations sought not to recruit new members but to create a political home for people within their networks that craved spaces where political discussion was welcomed and encouraged. The contradiction between the goals and the actions of solidarity movements featured in this study have implications for the literature on movement recruitment and movement longevity.

Author

• Naomi Joseph, University of California-Santa Barbara