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{"id":9559,"date":"2015-08-21T12:02:16","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T19:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/?p=9559"},"modified":"2020-12-16T17:07:08","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T01:07:08","slug":"on-solidarity-centering-anti-blackness-and-asian-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/2015\/08\/21\/on-solidarity-centering-anti-blackness-and-asian-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"On Solidarity, “Centering Anti-Blackness,” and Asian Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/iframe><\/p>\nAs a long-time racial justice worker – a grey head\u00a0in a movement mainly made up of young people \u2013 earnest young Asian Americans, anxious to acknowledge the pivotal role anti-Black racism plays in the perpetuation of white supremacy, often ask me\u00a0how\u00a0to \u201ccenter anti-Blackness\u201d in Asian American racial justice activism. I am as often asked that question by white progressives who aspire to become allies in the Movement for Black Lives.<\/p>\nMy answer is simple. Acknowledge the leadership of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blacklivesmatter.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Black Lives Matter<\/a>\u00a0and use the political space and opportunity the movement has created \u2013 including the 24\/7 media coverage that has finally changed the dominant news narratives about Black crime to one of crimes against Black bodies \u2013 to ask ourselves, how does this movement serve me and those like me, whether we\u00a0be Asian or Latino, Native or white? And then make those connections and tell your story.<\/p>\nSome tell me doing so \u201cde-centers anti-Blackness.\u201d But \u201ccentering anti-Blackness\u201d requires us to tell the stories of the many oppressions that hold it in that central role, as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/2012\/05\/04\/blackness-is-the-fulcrum\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">fulcrum of white supremacy<\/a>, and of the many <a href=\"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/2014\/03\/25\/the-model-minority-is-a-lever-of-white-supremacy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">levers<\/a> without which elites, who are the ultimate beneficiaries of white supremacy,\u00a0cannot continue to use that fulcrum to\u00a0continue to propel us toward racial dystopia.<\/p>\nWhite supremacy, after all, originated as a labor exploitation system. Racism wasn\u2019t it\u2019s primary product. No. Cotton, sugar, tobacco, produce for our markets, and chattel slaves, these were the commodities around which it was built, and these commodities were created for the sake of profit. Racism and white supremacy were the means, not the end.<\/p>\nIn today\u2019s more complex economy, the hand that picks the strawberry isn\u2019t the same as the one that\u00a0packages it for market, but both are exploited for the sake of profit.<\/p>\nStill others tell me that telling such complex stories \u2013 stories about connections and intersections, and common cause being rooted in multiple self-interests is too much for most people. Only those already ready to hear it will listen. That it’s preaching to the choir.<\/p>\nTo them, I say this \u2013<\/p>\nThose who say activists for racial justice ought not preach to the choir are too personally invested in the people doing the singing to hear what they sound like to those for whom they are strangers or even the \u201cother.\u201d To them, the lack of harmony among our voices makes us sound confusing at best, and like nothing more than noise, even an angry din, at worst. And this has been true for a very long time.<\/p>\nNow, finally, a clear, compelling voice \u2013 an Aretha in the form of the Movement for Black Lives \u2013 has risen in our midst, cutting through the noise and turning heads everywhere. Our job is not to stop singing in order to hear her, nor to try to copy her and sing along.<\/p>\nTo silence ourselves diminishes the potential power and reach of our combined voices. To simply sing along threatens to drown her voice out.<\/p>\nInstead, we need to find our way to harmony, weaving our various voices together while retaining the integrity of each voice.\u00a0We are, after all, there to sing, to have our voices heard, too. If not, why show up? And our singing is of stories that are clearly deeply intertwined, if only we can sing in harmony.<\/p>\nTo help people understand relationship, the social nature of what we have been, are now, and will be in the future we create together, not singly but\u00a0together, whether we do so with conscious intent or not is the most important message of our music.<\/p>\nHarmony is our goal. Not amalgamation or appropriation or imitation. We need to use the political space and cultural opportunity that the Movement for Black Lives has created for us and use it for this purpose, picking up the diverse threads of our lives and weaving them into a powerful, prophetic cry for justice.<\/p>\nThis after all, is the true self-interest we all share in the cause\u00a0of Black liberation. Black liberation has always has been the teacher, the prophet, the true hope for the liberation of us all.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a long-time racial justice worker – a grey head\u00a0in a movement mainly made up of young people \u2013 earnest young Asian Americans, anxious to acknowledge the pivotal role anti-Black racism plays in the perpetuation of white supremacy, often ask me\u00a0how\u00a0to \u201ccenter anti-Blackness\u201d in Asian American racial justice activism. I am as often asked that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[404,1275,1334,1335,1332,11,1333,47],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-9559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-asian-americans","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-fulcrum-of-white-supremacy","tag-labor-exploitation","tag-movement-for-black-lives","tag-racism","tag-solidarity","tag-white-supremacy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9559"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11255,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9559\/revisions\/11255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9559"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}