Loading ...Roundtable on Anti-Blackness and Black-Palestinian Solidarity
In the course of resilience against the merciless edge of state-violence in the summer 2014, protestors in Ferguson held up signs declaring solidarity with the people of Palestine. In turn, Palestinians posted pictures on social media with instructions of how to treat the inhalation of tear gas. Organically, an analysis emerged highlighting similarities, but not sameness, of Black and Palestinian life, and more aptly, of their survival.
But before the violent and tragic events of summer 2014 unfolded, a critique of anti-Black racism among Arab communities in the United States and the Arab world had emerged putting into question the “natural” solidarity between Palestinians and Blacks. This often played out in competing claims in regards to Black solidarity and legacies of Black liberation struggles by Zionists and Palestinians, who among themselves are not necessarily in agreement. In turn, Black writers and activists responded to those claims with rejection, ambivalence, or affirmation based on different normative values. These interventions seemed to speak past one another for lack of a singular point of departure. Does the question of Black solidarity turn on a political commitment to combat white supremacy? Can that be done, even if victims of supremacist violence knowingly, or unknowingly, reify anti-blackness? If not, what is the proper response? If so, what is the proper response?
At the core of these exchanges is an unequivocal recognition of the value of Black solidarity and Black liberation legacies that has not been commensurate with an appreciation for ongoing struggles against structural and literal violence afflicting Black communities the world over. This dissonance thus embodies the risk of reproducing anti-blackness and occluding responsibility for it. In so doing, the critique has also given rise to interesting questions about race, race-formation, and racism in the Arab world. Could a U.S.-based anti-racist framework be applied indiscriminately across space? Does such a question fundamentally misunderstand the thrust of anti-blackness? What could be gained by clarifying the meaning of anti-blackness, often read as a stand-in for one form of racism rather than a framework that informs how the nation-state comes to embody technologies of power, coercion, and violence that determine death and the possibilities of life? By extension, and based on these competing understandings, how does a lack of critical engagement with the meanings of solidarity also risk reifying anti-blackness? And how could a politics committed to liberation beyond the possibilities of state reformation serve as a corrective?
Source: interviews.jadaliyya.com