The Color of Soul

"You light up when you see black people," Bernie told me. I didn't realize that. But I did live in a black neighborhood in Chicago, marched in civil rights demonstrations, and loved reading black authors.  I love soul food, souls brothers and sisters, and soul music, spirituals, blues, and jazz. In Hawaii, I gravitated to locals, native Hawaiians and hapa haoles. In Fresno, my friends were often brown, Mexican Americans and indigenous people. In Haiti I was encouraged by the continuing struggle for liberation by the descendants of former black slaves.

Solidarity is shared suffering, passion, and action. It goes beyond, but is also a prelude to, personal friendship. It is in solidarity with those who are suffering, but turning their passion into action in concert--power--that I discover my soul.

Soul is the color of all people who have been put down, left out, treated as commodities, used up for someone's advantage. Soul appears when they organize and mobilize to assert their dignity and demand respect. But those like me who have enjoyed the fruits of oppression, e.g. my status in America as white, male, educated, and relatively wealthy, can achieve soul through solidarity.

Soul growing through solidarity is more than "feeling their pain" or empathy. It is identifying with it. It is acting together with people in pain to analyze the root causes of unnecessary pain especially in the structures or habits of society. Solidarity is with all souls--black white, brown, red--who recognize  that the powerless of any is the powerlessness of all. Solidarity is for all souls, without exclusion, who want to build a democratic Republic. Solidarity is by souls of all colors sharing consciousness in a free, open, and just social order.