Racial alliances: differences can't be ignored and don't have to be divisive.

SHARING EXPERIENCES of oppression, in one form or another, provides the foundation for alliance-building between people of color. But, as the late and beloved Gloria Anzaldua said in her book Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras, "shared oppression by itself does not override the forces that keep us apart."

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Working in a group of women that combines different racial or national origins, we should assume problems will develop and strategize how to address them. It helps to think about those problems as rooted in differences of class, race, color (and other physical characteristics), nationality, culture, sexuality and age. Disability is also an issue; failure to recognize it can generate a sense of apartness, of isolation and indifference. All of these "differences" are linked to historical experience. All are interconnected and cannot be discussed in isolation from each other.

We should think in terms of building not only coalitions but also alliances. In a coalition, separate groups come together to address a common, usually immediate, single problem or set of related problems. Coalitions are often necessary and even vital. They have potentially great immediate impact and can pave the way for alliance-building.

Alliances should be broader in their focus, more profound, and more long-range, and more lasting. The forces of white supremacy and imperialism are too strong for us to battle separately. Strong alliances make it possible for us to dream of someday seeing a global women-of-color movement to create a more just global society.

Dealing with our differences and divisions cannot be left to casual concern or spontaneous resolution. It has to be one of our organizational priorities, a clear-cut part of the program.

For women of color all over the world, the most common and destructive experiences of violence have come from war. In modern times, at least, war has consistently left more women and children dead than soldiers. Here in the United States, we find that women of color have been subjected to racist violence in both similar and different ways.

The similarities and differences in historical experience of racism mean that women of color have different collective memories of violence and therefore they may relate differently to each other without always realizing it or knowing why. Dissimilar sources of pain may keep us focused on what separates rather than unites. For example, a Black woman may associate state violence with her color, while a Mexican/Latina will associate it with her language or accent.

As people of color in the United States, our experiences have all served as foundation stones of the United States as a nation: invasion and genocide, slavery, imperialist expansion, colonization and capitalist exploitation. White supremacy was imposed on all of us. Our experiences are different in the particularities of each group. The similarities, however, carry a powerful message: not forming alliances can only perpetuate our oppression and that of our children for generations to come.

In addressing these and other challenges, each group of women of color could put together its own list of Do's and Don't's based on real-life experiences of what helps us deal with the challenges and expand our strengths. Some will be very general and far-ranging, like the need to understand the different "herstories" and cultures of each racial group. Other very specific rules and procedures can be drawn up centered on establishing mutual respect.

For example: when a group of women goes to meet or work in a different setting from their own, be very aware of how the women in that unfamiliar setting do things: what are the spoken and unspoken rules, the protocols and the established values for human interchange? Don't be a know-it-all, but don't fail to share everything that might be helpful. Don't be in a hurry, too impatient to listen.

Also, don't give up if dialogue becomes difficult. It's normal. There can be enormous resistance to speaking openly about one group's issues with another. People, perhaps especially women, are often afraid of hurting someone's feelings, stepping on toes or seeming racist by bringing up feelings that might sound like white stereotypes.

The Institute for MultiRacial Justice, whose mission is to help build alliances between peoples of color and combat conflicts, has experience with these barriers and inhibitions. One lesson has been the difficulty of having such dialogue in a large, public gathering. This was what happened at three forums with multicolored panelists in the late 1990s in the Bay Area. At the third session, the panelists included a Black journalist who came close to provoking real discussion when she described the feelings of African Americans toward bilingual education. She was not afraid of being provocative, which is often what we need most.

What should we do, given the reluctance to speak openly? We must acknowledge it and work on solutions. Role-playing about some divisive issue can open people's eyes and generate discussion. Humor and a few provocative questions can loosen the grip of self-consciousness. It might help to set up a task force to undertake some specific project, like Black and Latino people working together to win more affordable housing.

Culture can also help generate communication and build bridges between different communities, as youth have shown with hip-hop, spoken word and other forms of cultural expression. It can be a way for women to make fun of differences or celebrate similarities, as the Latina Theater Lab together with young Asian women actresses did a few years ago in San Francisco. ("Hey, don't you know tofu is beans too?") Cultural expression can liberate our alliance-building energy and talents.

Building an alliance comes most easily when it emerges organically from a conflict situation. After the so-called "Rodney King riots" in Los Angeles, with clashes between Blacks and Koreans, church leaders from San Francisco's Black community brought their members together with Korean and other Asian Americans to talk about the conflict. Again, it was a large public meeting without collective, in-depth analysis of problems. Still, the opportunity for further dialogue had been created.

Women of color need to bring forth, speak about with honesty and reject any fear of our differences and conflicts. To make the goal of unity into a reason for denying conflict, as we sometimes do, is self-defeating. Fear achieves nothing; courage and respect are all. Today, as forces of reaction work to aggravate rather than diminish racism in this society, the times call for courage more than ever.

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Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez co-founded with Phil Hutchings and now directs the Institute for MultiRacial Justice. A longer version of this article will appear in Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology edited by Andrea Smith, Julia Sudbury and Beth Richie, to be published by South End Press in August.