In this post, Stone Center Scholar Leslie McCall reflects on a recent panel, Building Political Alliances Across Race and Class, hosted by the Stone Center and the Graduate Center.

By Leslie McCall

A journalist from The New York Times, an environmentalist from Appalachia, a professor of immigration politics, and an advocate for racial and economic justice came together one evening in May to discuss the vital work each one is doing to transform the political conversation around race, class, and inequality in the contemporary United States.

At present, that conversation, in both mainstream media and academic research, focuses overwhelmingly on division and polarization. This focus is so dominant that it threatens to become a problem in and of itself — reinforcing the perception of intractable divisions, furthering cynicism about the political process, and crowding out a discussion of the powerful alliances that are building throughout the country to challenge the root causes of these divisions.

The panelists provided crucial insights into how these alliances are being formed, without in any way denying or even playing down the existence of deep divisions and inequalities across race and class. Each panelist focused instead on examples of how such divisions can, under the right conditions, give way to common aspirations, strategic goals, and movements for social change.

The key question they addressed was: How do we pivot from day-to-day conflicts over access to schools, jobs, and other resources, to building long-term alliances that ultimately will lead to a real democracy and a more equitable society benefiting the vast majority of Americans? Heather McGhee — one of the panelists and a prominent advocate and former president of Demos — developed an apt phrase for this vision of collective gains in her recent book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Us and How We Can Prosper Together (Penguin, 2019). She calls it the “solidarity dividend.”

She described a recent example from Memphis that occurred after the publication of her book. An oil pipeline was slated to run through a Black neighborhood because pipeline advocates and business interests assumed that location would offer the “path of least resistance.” A cross-racial alliance was formed, however, when concerned members of the impacted Black neighborhood got together with environmentalists from primarily white communities who were fearful of water contamination in the city’s aquifer. They created the Memphis Community Against the Pipeline and successfully resisted the project.

McGhee believes this multiracial coalition was a “solidarity dividend” of the racial uprisings of 2020, which she said “settled into the fibers of communities in ways that can’t be undone.” She drew hope from this, even though many of the fundamental policy changes demanded by protesters have yet to come to fruition.

As an environmentalist and activist in Appalachia, Dana Kuhnline, campaign manager of Reimagine Appalachia, similarly illuminated how coal miners and environmentalists can overcome conflicts pitched at one level — such as over jobs — to address problems shared at another level. She argued for a focus on fighting against “community divestment,” which can draw people concerned about job loss, environmental hazards, or depleted budgets for public health and education. Understood in this way, community divestment affects most residents left behind by the coal industry and its abdication of responsibility to the land and people of these regions.

Kuhnline was emphatic that the delicate nature of building coalitions is best done by community organizers who have built local relationships of trust. Interference by outside politicos (e.g., texting Joe Manchin’s constituents) can come off as “tone deaf.” These efforts often target single issues of concern to outsiders when residents are confronting multiple, daily hardships that require substantial long-term investments. On this point, Kuhnline provided one of the most memorable statements of the night: “For the price of a commercial you could hire an organizer for a year” (referring to TV ads run by the Democratic Party).  

Janelle Wong, a third panelist and professor of politics and Asian American studies at the University of Maryland, talked about the crucial role that immigration plays in the politics of division. Instead of talking about anti-immigrant sentiment among whites, the typical subject of political commentary, she asked how people of color can create bonds of solidarity among each other. She pointed to the example of Black Americans, who, relative to Asian Americans, feel a greater sense of competition with immigrants over jobs yet are more supportive of humane and expansive immigration policies, according to her new research.

That may sound counterintuitive to someone who thinks of economic concerns as the primary driver of political beliefs. Yet it’s no surprise to scholars of Black American politics who have long identified a sense of “linked fate” that places concerns for the group above concerns for the individual. It’s not a big step from there to the incorporation of other racialized groups into a collective sense of (in)justice. Wong argued for the importance of fostering this collective orientation as a central goal of political organizing. She herself is working in coalitions that include Asian, Black, and Latinx Americans mobilizing in defense of Affirmative Action programs in higher education and equal access to specialized magnet schools in cities.

I have only scratched the surface in describing the evening’s wide-ranging and lively conversation, led with flair by Farah Stockman, New York Times Editorial Board member and author of American Made: What Happens to People When Jobs Disappear (Penguin, 2021), the best book on life and politics in communities left behind by economic change that I have read thus far.

In her comments, Stockman drew on the book’s deep reporting of three unionized steelworkers — a Black man, a white woman, and a white man — whose Indiana plant moved to Mexico in 2017. She described in clear, everyday terms how existing policy, punditry, and research often fail to grasp the nature of political and economic conditions in low-income and working-class communities, many of which are multiracial. In fact, her last question to the panelists was: Should the people shaping the national conversation — politicians, journalists, and academics — spend more time both reflecting on their own biases and listening to people on the other side of the education, racial, and class divides? Watch the video of this enlightening and timely conversation to hear their answers.

Recommended Further Reading/Viewing: