Solidarity with the Black community

In 2020, a new disease shines a spotlight on the extreme disparities in health and wealth along racial lines. COVID19 has disproportionately affected Black people, People of color and the poor across the globe. In the United States, Pacific Islanders, along with Black and Native people, have had the most disproportionate rates of COVID19.

And at the exact same time, the world is confronted by the ongoing and far too often deadly violence against people of color in the United States, specifically the murder of African Americans by white supremacists and the police.

This is, sadly, not a new condition in the United States, but age old. In a time of turmoil and pain for many, especially those personally affected by COVID19 in the Samoan and Pacific Islander communities, loss of family members and loss of employment, is a heavy burden to bear. It may feel the struggle for racial justice in the larger community and the Black community can not be as urgent an issue for us now. However, the truth is our rights are forever joined with the rights of Black people in the United States. If not for the hard-won sacrifices and deaths of Black people and their long fight for Civil Rights in the United States we would not now have the Civil Rights we Samoans and all other people of color enjoy.

Disproportionate health outcomes, like a higher loss of life in our communities during a pandemic, are a result of racial inequality in this country. In the United States our experiences, though different, require us to understand that our own freedoms as Samoans are inextricably linked with the freedoms of African Americans. Samoan solidarity with African Americans comes not only from our own history of racist imperialism but also from the experience of becoming racialized others in the United States and the similar painful experiences of racism under white supremacy. We must denounce anti-black racism and colorism. Anti-black racism is the backbone of colonialism and white supremacy.

SPDC was created in an effort to combat the effects of racist colonialism and systemic racism. Colonization divided Samoa and part of our islands remains a U.S. territory. This history, as an indigenous people, strengthens the core belief of SPDC that all racial and ethnic groups are equal and no racial ethnic group needs external improvement to become respectable. We have always stood in solidarity with the Black community but we commit to and endeavor to make more explicit our solidarity with Black people, our antiracist work and to continue to strengthen our identity as an indigenous people. Our work is ongoing and we hope to grow in this struggle.

The work to end police violence and systemic white supremacy must also be our work. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castille, Aaron Campbell and far too many others deserve more than anything we can write, but we can work together and alongside each other for justice and peace. In the words of Joy Alise Davis, Executive Director, Portland African American Leadership Forum(PAALF), “Today, we have the opportunity to take these wishes out of the dreamscape and into our collective reality.”