1 What Does Interlocking Solidarities Mean? A Theoretical Grounding from the Combahee River Collective

What Does Interlocking Solidarities Mean? Theoretical Grounding from the Combahee River Collective

Before ‘identity politics’ became a dirty word weaponized by conservative and right leaning political circles to sow divisiveness in politics and society at large, the Combahee River Collective used it to explore radical liberation and collectivization. The Combahee River was a collective of Black Feminists namely Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Demita Frazier, Cheryl Clark, Akasha Hull, Margo Okazaw-Rey, Chirlance McCray and Audre Lorde who came together in 1974 to write about issues of gender, race, class, and sexuality of Black women (Taylor, 2020). I was introduced to the Combahee River Collective during my graduate studies by Dr. Eugenia Zuroski in a cultural studies class. I remember reading the Combahee River Collective statement and thinking to myself “what a profound statement.” How does a profound statement open new ways of talking about liberation while stitching onto past learnings from Black/African tradition. This chapter hopes to reclaim the term “identity politics” and situate it as a loving tool for solidarity and liberatory work.

The statement outlines the beginnings of contemporary Black feminism, the ways to enact Black feminism as praxis, the challenges with organizing Black feminists, and issues within the standpoint of Black Feminism (Combahee River Collective, 1977). For this chapter I would like to hone in on the praxis of Black feminists as it opens up a world of possibilities in how we talk about liberation and abolition as collective goals while channeling them to individual constrictions of a patriarchal, colonial, settler world, nation, or state. For the Combahee River Collective focusing on their own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics (Comabhee River Collective, 1977). Prior to this sentence the collective situated their focus on identity politics in love, specifically saying “ our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters, and our community” (Combahee River Collective, 1977). So, we see that after all “identity politics” is not a dirty word but a loving word that centers the humanity of the person, a person’s immediate family (known or unknown) and their community.

This embodied form of knowledge is what the collective describes as the most radical politics that starts its foundation from one’s own identity. If one’s identity is situated in love then love can be shared from one individual to another causing a linkage of humanity and love in the community. This idea reminds me of the Adinkra symbol “akoma ntoaso” which means joining hearts to achieve togetherness in the spirit of “akoma.” “Akoma” is the heart, it is a symbol of love and goodwill. In unpacking the destruction of patriarchy, economic injustice, dehumanization, sexism, and so on the collective was able to unearth the value of loving oneself to unlock the cascading anti-colonial learnings in the spirit of love.

Centering one’s identity in love with relation to one’s community is what inspires solidarity, specifically relational solidarity. The Combahee River Collective stood in solidarity with progressive Black men who understood the commonalities of how economic injustice and capitalism dehumanized both Black men and women along with other non-white people. The lesson here is that relational solidarity is a gateway to connecting scaffolds for all peoples suffering from economic injustice and capitalism. And if we seek to connect our embodied identity politics with other diverse embodied identities from various political understandings, ultimately the task of challenging oppressive structures might expand liberation and abolition movements.

In 2025, I was the Ontario New Democratic Party (ONDP) candidate for Hamilton Mountain during the provincial election. In my conversations with people during the campaign the term “identity politics” came up a number of times. When it came up it was always in reference to the ONDP moving away from “working class issues and focusing too much on identity politics.” During the campaign I would have to reframe this talking point to say working class issues are in part identity politics. Before I explain further, it is important to note that because conservative and right leaning politicians and politics have been successful in dirtying the term “identity politics.” The majority of folks think “identity politics” is solely based on talking about racism, transphobia, xenophobia, and more recently critical race theory. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo has been at the center of dirtying and conflating “identity politics” with critical race theory. In a New Yorker article he claimed “critical race theory is the perfect villain” (Wallace-Wells, 2021). Rufo convinced other conservatives that anything to do with race, racism, and critical race theory was “being devoured by this ideology and that he needed to be problematized and limited in centers of power – the bureaucracy, city councils, state legislatures and in federal government (Wallace-Wells, 2021). This cultural war waged against “identity politics,” “woke,” and all things “critical race theory” is deliberate and speaks to the atomization of human relations built on divisiveness, hate, and individualism.

The radical politics espoused by the Combahee River Collective is a counter balance to the individualist and power hungry mantra of conservative activists like Christopher Rufo. The history of people of African descent in North America, is different from the history of Italians, the Irish, Jewish people, and other immigrants from other parts of the world. That difference is marked by various identities, locations, and access to money, power, language, etc. It is the realization of these markers that make up our specific identity and how we express our politics. For Black women such as the members of the Combahee River, these identities are the life line of how we not only express our politics but how we understand our oppression. For White workers who have not been sold as property how can they understand slavery, for white men how can they understand voter suppression when they have always had access to voting? For Black men who have not experienced sexual violence from slaves owners how can they understand misogynior? These reflective questions are important, because for the white worker that has not been sold as property but understands economic injustice needs to understand that economic injustice is tied into racial capitalism which depends on endured labor of racialized populations and free labor of enslaved peoples. If the white worker gets to enact economic justice in paid wages and the Black worker is underpaid, do we have justice for all or justice for some. If the Black man advocates for an end to oppression but still engages in patriarchal attitudes towards Black women and girls, do we have justice for all or justice for some. If white men always vote for other white men and their laws do not take into account the needs of non-white people, is there governance for all or governance for some. If white women have access to voting rights and Black and Indigenous women do not have voting rights, are human rights for all or for some. It is these reflections that must situate our understanding of not only ourselves but how we are in relation to others.

Our identity(ies) is/are the gateway to how we understand and see our oppression in our communities, provinces, and countries, to deny this would be to deny our realities. Our realities for survival and power are shrouded in our identities in relation to others and the world around us. This is identity politics. This realization is just the beginning of building a collectivist community of love, support, and action. Our love, support, and action is manifested in not only understanding what we go through but how we relate to each other in solidarity. By solidarity I mean showing up for each other and requiring us to identify connections and not sameness as Carruthers reminds us of (Carruthers, 2018). Economic injustice in the labour market is connected to racial discrimination, gendered based violence is connected to poverty and homelessness, carceral violence is connected to eugenics and to attain liberation from all these problems requires interlocking solidarities.

Interlocking solidarities are meaningful connections we make with people, communities, groups (formal and informal) and movements to reciprocate not only love for one another but our understandings of what makes us human and how to collectively achieve liberation in action together. Collective struggle and work in love is not a new phenomenon, it is a realization and gift from our ancestors, passed on from generation to generation in hopes of building a better future not only for people of African descent but of all peoples on this planet.

I am grateful for my ancestors who through Adinkra symbols speak to the importance of interlocking solidarities “akoma ntoaso,” and reading this same idea via the Combahee River Collective. The spirit of love (ɔdɔ) in our hearts (akoma) is the foundational grounding to unleash meaningful global relational solidarity that knows no bounds but knows liberation. Thus it is pivotal to flow like a river with the ancestral spirits of collective power always learning from the past to improve the current state of affairs while building a better future.

A better future in this world free from the interlinked economic, political, cultural and psychic dimensions of colonization (as described by Ngugi wa Thiongo), neocolonialism (as described by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah) and modernity (from a Black studies framework) requires communal interlocking of different forms of knowledge. In the 149th episode of the Black Studies Podcast featuring Dr. Brian Kwoba (University of Memphis), he makes this point:

“Black studies should think about integrating and not doing the kind of old school Black male-led studies that excluded and marginalized Black women, nor doing the more new school Black women-led studies marginalizing Black boys and men but rather integrating and telling stories in a way that welcomes and invites contributions of Black women and men and children and elders and and and …” Black Studies Podcast 40 mins ~

Dr. Kwoba is pushing us to focus on relational solidarity in our liberatory work and how we tell the stories of our liberatory work. This is congruent with the idea of interlocking solidarities. What I/we know is completely valid and yet incomplete in isolation hence the need for “and, and, and,”… which adinkra calls the joining of hearts “akoma ntoaso.”

Another way of thinking about “and, and, and,” is by visualizing our liberatory work as a “scaffolding experience”. This is a term I use as a metaphor to capture the multilayered, intertwining, and integrating nature of one’s lived experience in relation to others in localized and globalized environments, which are connected by world history, identity formation, and socio-cultural-economic formations.

For me the “scaffolding experience” is a theoretical and practical framework that allows us to understand the multilayered, intertwining, and integrating identities, positionalities, and experiences of people of African descent (and others in the Global South). It recognizes that the “Black experience” is not monolithic but instead comprises  a diverse range of perspectives, knowledge, and ways of being shaped by the local and global conditions of the African diaspora (Ndlovu‐Gatsheni, 2020). Thus it is essential to bridge these diverse ranges of perspectives toward a pluriversal exchange of ideas and knowledge for liberation and self-determination.

Dr. Kwoba, in his Black Studies Podcast, ends with this quote from Audre Lorde “Black Studies center was the very house of difference rather than the security of any one particular difference.” Dr Kwoba shares Audre Lorde’s to explain how coloniality has created/taxonomized non-European/White folks through difference making. Thus to undo coloniality (difference making) requires insightful thinking, imagining, and action not by difference making but by stitching together the results of difference making. In time,this stitching gets us to the root causes of coloniality and pushes us to liberatory action together. You can think about these differences as our created identities, positionalities, geography etc, which should be integrated as we relate to each other in the project we call modernity.

By unpacking the term “identity politics” from the Combahee River Collective statement I have argued that identity politics is not the dirty word Christoher Rufo wants you to believe but is in fact the theoretical and practical grounding for creating a world free of oppression, colonialism, and imperialism. I have made the claim that the ideas from the Combahee River Collective statement are spatially connected with Ghanaian/Akan/African philosophies as seen through the adinkra symbol “Akoma Ntoaso.” These ideas, concepts, and practical tools are not only in the abstract but have been used by several people of African descent across the globe to tackle the longstanding issue of anti-Blackness/Africaness. This text book is part of the scaffolding experience to contribute to the linkages of the Black Radical Tradition. Thus, in the next chapters you will hear from politicians, journalists, students, scholars, and community organizers in Ontario, who are exploring relational solidarity in their work. They share how they come to their work, why their work is important, and how abolition/liberation is activated in their work.

References

Combahee River Collective (1977). The Combahee River Collective Statement. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/combahee-river-collective-statement-1977/

Kwoba, B. (2025). The long history of Black Radicalism. The Black Studies Podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/brian-kwoba-department-of-history-university-of-memphis/id1745568685?i=1000719501502

Rodney, W. (2022). Decolonial Marxism. New York: Verso Books.

Taylor, K.Y. (2017). How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Haymarket Books.

Wallace-Wells, B. (2021). How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/how-a-conservative-activist-invented-the-conflict-over-critical-race-theor