Redefining Solidarity by Jeannine Erickson, Writers' Room Manager
ID: Authors Kao Kalia Yang and Shannon Gibney are pictured next to two images of protests with signs that read “Stop Asian Hate” and “Black Power Supports Yellow Peril”
What is Solidarity?
What does it look like?
In both theory and more importantly in practice?
Where do I even begin?
Where do we even begin?
I found myself asking these questions and more in the wake of yet another shooting in America. The Atlanta shooting. We knew that in order to be there for our students, we had to create a space for conversation and processing in our South High based Writers’ Room. In response to the problematic rhetoric that was cropping up, we focused the event on Black and Asian Solidarity.
When we first started planning this event, I didn’t concern myself with the details so much as the need for this conversation to unfold. I contacted Shannon Gibney and Kao Kalia Yang in light of not only their individual work but also their friendship. To ensure that student voice was included in the conversation we connected with the Asian Student Association (ASA) and together we planned and facilitated our first student-led student/author panel discussion on the topic of Black Asian Solidarity Across the Arts. There were many powerful moments over the course of our 90 minute conversation but allow me to highlight that which resonated with me the most.
In response to the question “What is solidarity? And What does it look like?” our panelists responded accordingly:
Author Shannon Gibney spoke to the importance of the current moment and the importance of being in relationship with each other. She also spoke about how Solidarity, both in practice and theory, without relationship is just abstract and has little to no impact nor value. She as well as “her partner in all good things” Kao Kalia Yang spoke to the misconceptions surrounding the relationship between African Americans and Asian Americans, particularly in the context of Minnesota, in relationship to other major cities across the country. And all 4 of our panelists spoke about how we cannot discuss Solidarity between these two communities without recognizing and acknowledging the fact that neither community’s lived experiences are monolithic.
In response to this question, I especially appreciated Shannon’s words on the role that whiteness plays in cross-cultural Solidarity and the role it plays in Minnesota and the artistic community here. The words that struck me and deeply resonated with my own challenges to Solidarity work were: “I think that, you know, one of the biggest barriers to cross-cultural connection between communities of color and Native folks is that we have to go through whiteness to get to each other.”
Echoing these sentiments Kao Kalia Yang went on to describe her lived experience as a refugee. As a Hmong woman who grew up on the East Side. And how although she couldn’t at the time understand the source of her Black neighbors' tears and pain she could understand the source of her own and how she would come to understand through relationship with herself and with Black people. All four panelists spoke to the role and consequences of whiteness and white supremacy.
“These convergences, in a predominantly white state, create certain tensions. But we are a model in some ways, and I truly believe this, of a country birthing itself. Of a state birthing itself in many ways. It’s a bloody, messy affair. It is a painful affair. But the whiteness of rural Minnesota can no longer stand because how can we live?” - Kao Kalia Yang
Finally our student panelists, Bezawit Abate and Caleb Stipkovitis went on to share their own personal relationships with Solidarity. Bezawit, aka Beza, offered: “We have to recognize who is our common enemy and how are we going to overcome it? Overtake it? Instead of fighting with each other?”
She went on to talk about the role stereotypes play in true Solidarity. And spoke to the fact that Blackness and Asianness cannot exist in a monolith, her own struggles combating negative stereotypes surrounding Blackness and Africanness and how it differs from those associated with Asianness and the Model Minority Myth. Beza concluded her thoughts by cautioning the audience that we must separate white people from the construct of whiteness.
I appreciated Shannon’s wisdom in response to Beza and in response to her closing statement: “You can be White and Black identified and Black and White supremacist… You have to understand that this is a system. White people still have White privilege even if they align themselves with Asianness or Blackness. Our fight is not with White people. Our fight is with White Supremacy.”
Caleb expanded upon this further and spoke about performative allyship and how it can’t be confused or labeled as true allyship: “Solidarity can’t just be you posting on Instagram. I agree with Shannon that the most important part of Solidarity is building relationships.”
Caleb went on to talk about the harm caused by those who would seek to be in relationship with you in an attempt to assuage their own guilt or to tokenize you. He also went on to echo other panelists about the importance of plurality. Caleb shared his own complex relationship with his Asianess as a half White, half Chinese man and pushed again for the audience to recognize that our communities cannot and should not be constructed as a single story.
In celebration of AAPI Heritage Month, in honor of other history and heritage months across the diaspora of those of us who have been labeled Other, I implore you to reflect on your own relationship with power, privilege, and marginalization. Hopefully this glimpse into our conversation pushed you to define or perhaps redefine your own relationship with Solidarity. I personally will be leaning into the words of Kalia and her thoughts on Minnesota being a catalyst for something beautiful. For if we are truly a nation, a state being reborn, as I pray we are, we have an obligation to do and be better. Not only for ourselves. But for our future.