Amanda Reid | In solidarity

Reid About It | How the term “solidarity” is misused

By Amanda Reid 08/29/16 10:12pm

The daily news updates of police shootings against black men and women have led to much hashtagged outrage: solidarity nowadays means expressing communal dissatisfaction. In response to years of repeated brutality, the #BlackLivesMatter movement rose to public attention, garnering strong support from many different communities. It has united a vast range of communities together in the same vein of hurt and anger.

Amidst the various battle cries for change and reform the word “solidarity” is constantly seen — systemically so. It’s a strong word, full of promise and well-intentioned white guilt. It is also one that is slowly losing its meaning.

Solidarity, which technically means unity of thought and feeling within a group of individuals, is a Platonic ideal. It embodies a sense of heroism and has been used to define unity in social movements. However, solidarity is now becoming less about the social movements it refers to, but rather its own definition and cultural mark. It embodies safe banality and easy activism, whether or not we can admit that to ourselves.

By following hot button issues, the term “solidarity” is a hot word. It can’t help but be overused. It can be recycled through different issues and public tragedies, yet retain the same message. It can be used to delineate our beliefs, our reactions and our levels of commitment to social justice. And this vagueness of definition can lead to misappropriation.

Solidarity sometimes invites the chance to promote your own agenda within an already defined movement. When the movement’s message coincides with narratives of oppression in other communities it’s easy to misuse “solidarity.”

Last April, the female spoken word duo Yellow Rage did a performance that revolved around issues of Asian American identity. In particular, one piece brought up police violence in the Asian community. One of the poets, Michelle Myers, introduced her poem by mentioning the illegal shooting of an Asian American man. Myers introduced the piece by mentioning that it is written “in solidarity with the #BLM movement,” unknowingly equating #BLM’s mission with the Asian American narrative.

Invoking a specific movement as a conduit for one community’s frustrations can digress into the appropriation of the movement itself. The movement becomes diluted with different voices — all of which vary in pitch and tone. In the end, tacking on the word “solidarity” to join one community-specific issue with another issue does little to clarify either movement’s aim.

Moreover, well–intentioned solidarity easily morphs into backseat activism, wherein we employ the word in Facebook statuses meant to validate our own social presence. Solidarity unintentionally becomes a catch-all term for real but vague frustration. It is redefined by our actions and associations to the movement.

Solidarity also embodies a complacency that allows us to hide in our biases, and look at an issue merely through its surface, tweet-like appearance.

How can we truly understand what solidarity means when the majority of us come from vastly different, culturally disparate experiences? How can we expect to embody a unity of feeling with a group whose systematic place in society is unlike our own? And finally, how can we employ the word “solidarity” with complete awareness of the racial biases we never truly deal with?

Invoking solidarity, as a cultural term and attitude, is undoubtedly a positive gesture that sustains social movements. There will be community-specific issues that converge, such as racism and sexism, and these require the intersectional message that solidarity strongly evokes. The wildfire spread of hashtags also encourages the public eye to be aware of ongoing oppression.

But the coupling of a hashtag with the term “solidarity” redefines it into a platitude, and it thus means less every time it’s used. Hashtagging solidarity welcomes passivity, and unfortunately does little to start any meaningful conversation; it brings up and finishes the discussion.

For the most part, many of us want to — and do — stand in solidarity with the peers we see institutionally affected every day. Sometimes official support is necessary to ensure the members of the movement know their voices are heard. But minority communities should be aware that solidarity shouldn’t flatten all our issues together as a single cause.

In a society rife with racial tension, solidarity should be the platonic ideal we constantly strive towards. Until then, we need to constantly re-evaluate our relationship to social movements, and ensure that the power of the word “solidarity” doesn’t get lost in its own trendiness.

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