Dr. Robin Zheng, “The Power of Solidarity: How You and I Can Change the World”

This past November, the Speaker Series Pod invited Dr. Robin Zheng to campus from the University of Glasgow to speak about the power of solidarity as a tool for social change. For anyone who missed that talk, her piece “Reconceptualizing solidarity as power from below” covers the same material and would be a worthwhile read. In addition to her lecture with the Parr Center, the Speaker Series pod had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Zheng, to discuss her research and her article “Theorizing social change.”

In the beginning of the lecture, Dr. Zheng poses the question: how can an unequal world be made more equal? In other words, how can minority groups confront the majority? Through this framework, Dr. Zheng introduces solidarity as a potential answer to these questions.

 Her argument began by laying out the primary obstacle activists face in contemporary society: structural injustice. This term—popularized by Iris Marion Young, American philosopher, and feminist—refers to the manner in which institutional rules and social structures systematically deprive minority groups of access to the same resources and opportunities as others. This systematic deprivation reproduces inequitable common attitudes and channels the broader populace’s behavior into ways that are conducive to conformity. The only true tool that remains then for the otherwise powerless masses to use against such a ubiquitous foe is their collective ability to mobilize against the elites. One familiar example that Dr. Zheng gave was labor unions. The basis on which labor organizations accumulate influence is the leverage that sheer size and unity can engender. Another example of this phenomenon would be mass protests. Intensive, decentralized and often spontaneous organization is sometimes the only way for a frustrated population to make their voices heard, inspiring others to question the current system’s legitimacy and symbolically disrupt the comfort of elites enough to produce concessions. But the key to successfully achieving change is not solidarity alone, rather intersectionality as a foundation for solidarity. Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw and rooted in black feminist tradition, intersectionality is a framework for recognizing the varying and overlapping relationships that social categories like race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic status have with each other. Before solidarity can exist in a productive form, we as individuals must challenge the construction of our worldviews and acknowledge how others can better our understanding. Otherwise, the imperative lessons which derive from human differences will be wasted. 

On a more personal note, my one-on-one coffee talk with Dr. Zheng was particularly gratifying as it afforded me the chance to converse and intellectualize about race openly with a fellow Asian American in a way that I am not often able. We began with the matter of broader social change and our views on the general categories of “liberal” versus radical approaches. Upon agreeing that we tend towards socialist viewpoints, I inquired as to Dr. Zheng's thoughts on the trajectory of our society within her lifetime and what set of ideals we ought to be working towards. After making the point that large-scale social change usually arises because of objective crises like climate change and pointing to Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Jeremy Corbyn as examples, Dr. Zheng revealed an intriguing stance on institutional preservation. She defended the core trio of conservative values—religion, family, and nation—as sources of invaluable relationships. The strength of the attachments and sense of belonging they create, yes, often turn exclusionary and promote in-group-out-group pressures, but there simultaneously is something egalitarian about the idea that everyone shares the quality of being born into a family that they did not choose, a set of relationships that preexisted you and to which you must adapt. In an ideal world, we want to retain the intense attachments people feel without the sources of these attachments determining whether or not we can pursue life free of discrimination. Likewise, cultural differences should be equalized—appreciated without exoticization, fetishization, or feelings of superiority and inferiority. 

Taking the U.S. as a rather large microcosm of the world’s heterogeneity, we discussed each of our experiences growing up in such a distinctive racial landscape and how this created a great sensitivity to its effects on ourselves and those around us. Among many of my queries, Dr. Zheng and I explored the generational divide between Asian parents and Asian-American children. I related to her that my own parents appear not to see racism as so pervasive as my sister and I, yet not on account of unawareness. For previous generations, the overwhelming cruelty and essential omnipresence of race as a mediating factor of perception combined with a dearth of available hermeneutical resources and lack of acceptance towards candid discussions in the workplace about systemic prejudice seemed to leave minority adults with no choice but to suppress such sentiments and move on with survival. Just the fact that race (and gender and sexuality and so on) permeates my worldview is an attestation to the reality that I live in a more progressive time than the one in which my parents grew up. Dr. Zheng and I were of the same mind in our appreciation for even the language and liberty to verbalize oppression today. 

Leading up to our meeting, I wondered where the conversation would lead, how closely our experiences might line up, and where they would depart. But in the end, I found the encounter so rewarding simply because I was speaking with an adult who could affirm my sentiments and recognize their credibility from a place of empathy. Now the case is not that I desperately needed an outside perspective to assure me that race insidiously penetrates most of my social interactions or that any of my other opinions are valid. Still, my discourse with Dr. Zheng reminded me that I hadn’t been taught by a single Asian instructor since I was in fourth grade—a realization that made me both more thankful for the meeting and mournful for the inherent inability of many of my teachers to identify with my circumstances. If there was any one takeaway that I could impress from Dr. Zheng’s lecture, it would be to not downplay the impact individuals can have in concert; from my coffee with her, to remember the power of healthy representation