Solidarity is paradoxical – the form of acknowledgement is damaging to movements because it slows down methods of resistance

Paradoxes of Racialized Solidarity Th ough environmental activists may turn to discourses of solidarity as a way of addressing the racializing and colonial practices of the environmental movement, the philosophy of solidarity is still deeply embedded in the dominant relations of racialization and colonialism. Indeed, as Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández (2012) argues, solidarity strategies oft en reinscribe colonial logics and obscure complicity in colonization. Gada Mahrouse argues that whiteness is intrinsic to solidarity activism: solidarity is “a strategy built around the notion that people in positions of power are more likely to take notice of the brutality and injustice going on in various places if white and/or First World citizens become involved” (2014: 4). For the scholars who attend to the racialized logics of solidarity, critiques circulate around the idea of solidarity as a type of “jiujitsu” (Mahony and Eguren 1997) that simultaneously recognizes asymmetrical power relations and attempts to use power to transform these very relations (Coy 1997; Koopman 2012; Weber 2006). Th ese scholars gesture toward several paradoxes embedded within this logic, tracing how solidarity frames rely on and reinscribe racial and colonial ideas. While solidarity tactics tend to be framed as antiracist, they also recenter white/settler/ privileged people. Problematically, those purporting to act in solidarity are not always aware of this centering. The logics of solidarity require the presence of a privileged person in order for the work to proceed. At the same time, paradoxically, the privileged presence is framed as peripheral and in support (Koopman 2012; Mahrouse 2014). In this way, the whole repertoire of action hinges on privileged people’s participation, making them the linchpin of such strategies. Solidarity is predicated on the fact that in a white supremacist society, white bodies and white voices matter more. While seeking to leverage this logic, activists leave it uncontested and, in fact, trade on the logic (Mahrouse 2014; Tabar 2017). Leey’qsun scholar Rachel Flowers argues that the logics of settler privilege are particularly visible in settler-Indigenous solidarity work. She argues that in deploying their privilege to support Indigenous peoples’ resistance, settlers oft en fail to recognize their ability to choose when to support decolonial struggles. Th rough this mobilization of privilege, Flowers argues, “Indigenous sites of resistance also become sites where our domination is sustained rather than interrupted” (2015: 35). Th e critiques of race, white privilege, and solidarity also point to how this makes doing whiteness—a position that many solidarity activists reject as a political stance—central to the performance of doing solidarity, because in order to reap the benefi ts of privileged people’s positions, they must be legible as white, so they must play up aspects of whiteness that are valued under white supremacy (Koopman 2012; Mahrouse 2014; Weber 2006). Th is is particularly complicated for those involved in solidarity action who are mixed or people of color. In order for them to participate in these strategies, they oft en must explicitly try to perform whiteness (Mahrouse 2014) in order to access the benefi ts of privilege and thus mobilize the strategic interventions. Th is dynamic places people of color in situations where they are unable to engage the same tactics as their white colleagues because they cannot or will not pass as white. We also see instances in which settler activists of color must position themselves as similarly responsible for settler violence as white settlers, which can erase the colonial violence that is and has been enacted on non-Indigenous racialized people (Byrd 2011; Lawrence and Dua 2005; Morgensen 2015). For solidarity strategies predicated on the idea of amplifying the voices of impacted communities, a whole other set of contradictions arises. While privileged activists claim that more people will listen to their voices based on their social locations—oft en correctly—they then speak for others, a practice that they argue against (Mahrouse 2014). And when they do receive disproportionate press coverage or attention, they then have to stress that the stories of the directly impacted are, in fact, most important. Th e very presence of privileged solidarity activists belies that point: if the stories of impacted communities are more important and are the ones that should be heeded, why are solidarity activists in front of the cameras? Other scholars have also worked to negotiate and articulate this contradiction, arguing that there is a diff erence between speaking for and speaking alongside (Shohat 2001), or that these strategies draw on problematic ideas of conquest, exploration, and objectivity (Tilley and Cokley 2008). Sara Ahmed (2007) criticizes the move, suggesting that only the privileged have access to others’ narratives in this way and that the privilege to document others’ lives reinforces rather than undermines the logic of white supremacy. Along similar lines, Mahrouse (2014) argues that the “speaking alongside” approach to solidarity is a racialized privilege that is obscured through the logics of neutrality and exceptionalism, both of which become reifi ed as white or privileged people step in and speak for. In doing so, they suggest to other similarly situated people that the political struggle matters because of the privileged person’s exposure to risk and that reports can now be trusted because the situation is being documented “objectively” by a privileged person. Th ese ideas actively reinforce supremacist notions of who is credible and valuable. Solidarity strategies that use these approaches are implicated in reinforcing deeply problematic societal structures. Unangaxˆ scholar Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2012) have stressed the need to recognize incommensurability in solidarity or coalition-based collaboration. They suggest that while there may be some desired common outcome that overlaps across movements, the foundational reasons for the movements’ existences are fundamentally different. Without recognizing this, attempts to collaborate closely can replicate colonial practices by subsuming Indigenous sovereignty, or the rights of other impacted communities, under a more powerful or privileged movement. Sally Scholz (2008) makes a related, though separate, argument about the significance of epistemological privilege. This points to what Geonpul scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2004) labels epistemologies of whiteness, where we can trace how dominant Eurowestern ways of knowing are mobilized in solidarity relationships despite the intentions of privileged activists, and that these undermine opportunities for decolonial solidarity. Dhillon argues “that without an explicit and deep anti-colonial analysis we run the risk of reinscribing the narrative of white settler benevolence . . . and a colonial subjectivity that keeps white settler power intact” (2015: 6). The scholarship in this area notes that solidarity activists are often aware of these contradictions and their complicity in reinscribing racial hierarchy, yet they continue taking up strategies that place them in these paradoxes (Mahrouse 2014; Weber 2006). Mahrouse (2014) demonstrates that the existence of privileged people wanting to work in solidarity, follow the leadership of impacted communities, and not be in a position of asymmetric power does not change the power relations but instead makes them more visible and more uncomfortable. For example, activists on the ground know that the rejection of a charity model as condescending can also contradict requests for philanthropic support. In these instances, solidarity activists are caught in a paradox of not wanting to mobilize their economic power over impacted communities while also intending to follow the direction of the community (Weber 2006). Th ey know that they are participating in struggles that are not their own, and that this is a potentially problematic position, yet they participate, arguing that the invitation of communities soothes some of the contradictions inherent to their participation. Th ese contradictions do not resolve themselves and persistently pose problems for antiracist and anticolonial allies to try to navigate.