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Solidarity Care How to Take Care of Each Other in Times of Struggle Myisha Cherry Volume 3, Number 1 Spring 2020 DOI: 10.25335/PPJ.3.1-4 Abstract Being aware of social injustices can cause existential and mental pain; comes with a burden; and may impede a flourishing life. However, I shall argue that this is not a reason to despair or to choose to be willfully ignorant. Rather, it’s a reason to conclude that being conscious is not enough. Rather, during times of oppression, resisters must also prioritize well-being. One way to do this is by extending what I refer to as solidarity care. I begin by providing an account of solidarity care. I then offer pragmatic ways in which one can extend solidarity care to others. I conclude by responding to two possible worries. Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. —Audre Lorde (2007) 1. The Problem of Awareness process of deprogramming social conditionings, focusing on consis- The epistemic state known colloquially in the tent efforts to challenge the univer- United States as “Being Woke” has become a sal infractions we are all subjected to. However, in order for one to stay pop-culture phenomenon. A pop song com- woke, one must first, be woke.1 manding listeners in a falsetto to “stay woke” is the first tune we hear in the 2017 hit movie The term is not recent but is said to go back to Get Out, a film that reveals in horrific and a 1962 New York Times article “If You’re Woke thought-provoking ways the scary reality that You Dig It,” by William Melvin Kelley.2 Some some white liberals may not be as woke as might even recall similar reiterations of the many assume. Although a slang term indeed, term expressed in late ’80s and early ’90s rap “woke” proved its pop-culture dominance music by artists who would eventually become when it appeared in the dictionary in 2017. Mer- known as “conscious” rappers because they riam-Webster now defines it as being “aware were aware of how social structures function, of and actively attentive to important facts and they challenged––through rhyme––such and issues (especially issues of racial and social structures. Essayist and novelist James Baldwin justice).” Writing about the concept, blogger uses this latter term in The Fire Next Time to Raven Cras claims: describe aware citizens––referring to them as “relatively conscious whites and relatively con- The phenomenon of being woke is a 3 cultural push to challenge problem- scious blacks.” Consciousness, like wokeness, atic norms, systemic injustices and referred to a state of being aware of injustices, the overall status quo through com- sharing that knowledge and even decrying plete awareness. Being woke refers manifestations of injustice. to a person being aware of the theo- retical ins and outs of the world they If ignorance is bliss, as some claim, one might inhabit. Becoming woke, or staying wonder about the advantage of having such woke, is the acknowledgment that everything we’ve been taught is a 1. Raven Cras, “What Does It Mean to be Woke,” lie . .. Woke(ness) provides us with a Blavity News, September 26, 2015, blavity.com/ basic understanding of the why and what-does-it-mean-to-be-woke/what-does-it- how come aspects of societies’ social mean-to-be-woke?category1=opinion. and systemic functions. The phrase 2. Some even claim that it goes back to the itself is an encouragement for people 1940s. to wake up and question dogmat- 3. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New ic social norms. It requires an active York: Vintage International, 1993), 105. Cherry PPJ 3.1 (2020) 2 an awareness. More specifically, given the se- you and the problem—not a solution.”6 Point- duction and comfort that comes from being ing to an epistemic disadvantage, NPR’s Sam willfully ignorant of suffering and injustice (as Sanders claims that the problem is that “we’ve well as their sources), why then would anyone made woke a rigid state of being instead of a choose to be woke, conscious, or aware. It is, I process of continual growth. For that reason . claim, because there are benefits. let’s put woke to sleep.”7 I think these claims are tenable. However, these worries are related The first is an epistemic benefit. By being woke, more to the misuse of wokeness rather than its one is able to see and perhaps understand the uses. I take it for granted that those who are world for what it is: a world that is filled with “growing in their wokeness” and are inspired wonder and beauty but also a world, particu- towards action given their understanding of larly this American part of the world, filled with oppression are more vulnerable to threats inequality, oppression, social exploitation, and to their well-being and are likely to neglect it social exclusion. This epistemic benefit is the as they pursue social and political solutions. red pill from The Matrix (1999). While the met- Therefore, it is worrisome that the discourse aphorical blue pill may give you security, it will deemphasizes well-being. also make you ignorant. On the other hand, while the red pill may give you unpleasant I find the neglect interesting because there is knowledge and expose you to cruel truths, it a connection between being woke and being still gives you knowledge and truth nonethe- well. The connection is this: being woke can im- less. This truth is valuable within itself.4 There is pede being well. If this relationship is neglect- also a utility benefit to being woke: for one can ed, then those who are trying to understand only challenge systemic injustices after she is oppression and engage in productive action to first able to see that injustices exist. As legal end it, will eventually be consciously awake but scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw eloquently puts it, perhaps psychologically, emotionally, and even “When you can’t see a problem, you can’t solve physically asleep. I do not take this claim to be it.”5 controversial or even novel. Scholars, writers, activists, and those in the medical profession Although there are benefits to being woke, I mostly agree with me on this point. However, have a worry. I wonder if the public’s obsession I will offer––if only briefly––three premises to with being woke, and the discourse around it, support the view. have come at the cost of neglecting another phenomenon: being well. This is not to say that First, being woke, with all its benefits, can cause there are no other important worries associat- existential pain. W.E.B. Du Bois in 1903 rhetor- ed with the concept. Some liberal and conser- ically engages the wokeness dilemma in the vative critics have provided arguments for why form of a depressing question when he asks the term needs to be, in their words, “put to “How does it feel to be a problem?” in the first sleep.” Pointing to a utility disadvantage, con- chapter of The Souls of Black Folks. He goes servative journalist David Brooks claims that on to argue that the second sight that Black “the problem with wokeness is that it doesn’t Americans have “yields him no true conscious- inspire action; it freezes it. To be woke is first ness . this double consciousness, this sense of and foremost to put yourself on display. To always looking at one’s self through the eyes of make a problem seem massively intractable is others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of to inspire separation—building a wall between a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”8 This is the constant task of being aware 6. David Brooks, “The Problem with Wokeness,” 4. According to the metaphor, there is extrin- New York Times, June 7, 2018, https://www.ny- sic value as well. Having this knowledge rep- times.com/2018/06/07/opinion/wokeness-rac- resents true freedom. On the other hand, while ism-progressivism-social-justice.html. the blue pill provides a beautiful prison, it is still 7. Sam Sanders, “Opinion: It’s Time To Put a prison nonetheless. ‘Woke’ To Sleep,” NPR, December 30, 2018, 5. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “The Urgency of Inter- https://www.npr.org/transcripts/680899262. sectionality,” TED, December 7, 2016, https:// 8. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New www.youtube.com/watch?v=akOe5-UsQ2o. York: Vintage International, 1989), 3. Cherry PPJ 3.1 (2020) 3 of how others see you or will see you in your hundred ergs; he uses 50 percent the identity. This task does not only strip you of the same way a white man does, dealing existential freedom and pleasure to see your- with what the white man has [to deal self through your own eyes alone, but it limits with], so he has 50 percent left. But he uses 25 percent fighting being your being to a subject (often a despised, in- black, [with] all the problems being ferior, or suspicious one) of constant gaze and black and what it means.13 investigation. How can one truly be oneself or think of oneself as such, when they have this This energy that is sapped by dealing with a consciousness? This is existential pain. hostile world, is energy that could be used for family interactions and creative projects. This Second, being woke to one’s own oppression has material consequences.

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