Our engagement with their arguments IS a form of solidarity

(Jesse A., Activist, , 2-5)

Time and again, white people acting as allies in other people’s “progress” have not just failed to address racist power relations; they have entrenched white dominance. Altruism cannot be the basis for white anti-racist action. There’s only one thing that can: solidarity. Solidarity is about unity, not around like-mindedness or affinity but around common interests. Neither having the same opinions nor even mutual fondness is required for one to enter into a solidarity relationship with another. All they need is the acknowledgement that, to achieve liberation, “I need you and you need me.” Solidarity is about fighting for oneself alongside another person, for one’s family alongside another family. The thing is, when two people fight for themselves alongside one another, when they perceive themselves to be teammates, they begin to warm to each other. In 1939, a Chicago stockyard worker, Jim Cole, told a reporter from the Federal Writers’ Project, “I don’t care if the union don’t do another lick of work raisin’ our pay, or settling grievances about anything. I’ll always believe they done the greatest thing in the world gettin’ everybody who works in the yards together, and breakin’ up the hate and bad feelings that used to be held against the Negro.”Only when white people come to see that our own liberation is bound up in the liberation of others can we achieve solidarity and have a basis for white anti-racism that does not produce the colonial outcomes generated by altruism.