9 Where is the Reciprocity? Notes on Solidarity from the Field

A friend from graduate school, a widely respected African Americanist, frequently tells me stories of facing resistance when she points out the need to be more inclusive of other racial and ethnic groups. Whether it be discussions about a book series, a conference, article submissions for a journal, leadership roles in professional organizations, a hiring strategy, graduate admissions, or even diversity at her university, she sounds like a broken record about the need to consider groups other than Black and white. She laughs about once again having "to push for diversity on diversity committees." We attended Northwestern during the 1990s. During the struggle to establish faculty lines in Asian American studies there, she had been among a very small cohort of supportive graduate students and faculty, predominantly women of color. I remember asking her why she, an African American woman, was supporting the cause. "Because I'm human," she smiled.

Nowadays, when she teaches her survey course, "African American History since 1865," she contextualizes her analyses within a wider understanding of race relations within the United States. In her lecture, "Racialization of Citizenship and Labor," she devotes some time talking about how Chinese laborers were brought to the South as disposable, powerless replacements for enslaved labor. In her lecture, "An Era of Compromise, Radicalism, and Reform," she discusses how U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), during a period of deepening segregation, reaffirmed the narrow interpretation of birthright citizenship in the Fourteenth Amendment.¹ She can tell by her students' confused faces that they aren't quite sure why she is talking about Asians in a course on African Americans. The Asian students' faces turn quickly from confusion to delight. It can take a bit longer for some other students to get on board. She remembers a particular Black student who seemed displeased; the student had expected the course to be her time to learn about her people. But even this student began grasping the larger lesson as the class progressed, with my friend weaving in more stories about Asians and other nonblack groups into her lectures about African American history. The clincher for more resistant students, my friend thinks, happens towards the end of the semester when she shows an image of Asian students at a protest supporting affirmative action holding a sign that says: "We Won't Be Your Wedge."

The larger lesson is twofold: 1) race is multifaceted and relational (i.e., what happens to one race shapes the experiences of other races); and 2) solidarity is precious. My friend disagrees with the notion that all other racism is simply a less intense form of antiblack racism. Different histories, different legal regimes, and different stereotypes mean that different groups often experience racism differently. She will bring up the example that as a Black American, she never has anyone questioning her citizenship. As she and I chart our own understandings about racial formation, we swap stories from our childhoods during the 1970s—hers largely spent in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and mine in Houston, Texas. She has recalled the tiresome "oppression Olympics" among her peers while attending Mount Holyoke during the 1980s. She has said that she once believed that structural racism meant that a Black person couldn't be racist, but she began questioning that notion while still in college. Racism, we now both agree, is highly contextual and can shift dramatically depending on the power relations in micro-environments within larger structures of power. Anybody can be racist, to greater or lesser degrees, given the right context. But we also would like to believe that anyone could be anti-racist, given the right context. And it stands to reason that understanding racism contextually and relationally is a paramount step in fostering true anti-racism.²

Yet I find it hard to advocate for what I consider this anti-racist commonsense in many academic circles. When I first began drafting this essay in 2018, I was angry. Today, three years later, I am angrier still. Even clearer to me now is how a mentality of scarcity renders us ineffective in what...