It should be taken into consideration that the four major groups of people of color, Asian Americans, African Americans, Latinx, and Indigenous, represent significant diversity within themselves. There were an estimated 10 million Indigenous People living in this land when the Europeans arrived, and they represented many nations. Also, Asian Americans came here from across that expansive continent; African Americans came primarily from West Africa and represent many tribal groups; and early arrivals from Mexico, along with later arrivals from across Latin America, constitute the Latinx population in the United States. It is important to note that Mexican Americans represent the largest part of the Latinx community and that most of these folks are citizens.
There are many rivers of difference within the individual groups, and building bridges is critical to the release of the healing power that can lead to the creation of a new understanding of power and how it might be used to really support the notion of working for the “general welfare” of everyone who lives in this land. The diversity within groups makes it clear that it will take patience and a fair amount of skill to engage in a viable conversation exploring how to develop the process of constructing the bridges over difference that have to be forged for a collective strength. What has to be vacated and replaced with new energy? And how might the four groups of people of color begin to work with the idea of forming coalitions that will assist in the struggle to create a sustainable world in which all the inhabitants are viewed as worthy humans?
Also necessary is an exploration into ways to involve white people who are willing to take on the roles of ally, co-resister, and fellow pilgrim, because it is not possible to do the required liberation work in a nonviolent framework without the involvement of white people. The day will come when the white male ruling class itself will have to engage in the process with the community collectives that will form as the bridging of the rivers of difference continues across the vast landscapes of hierarchies of human value that have become too weak to support the supremacy paradigm. It will take a while.
The final chapters of this book address ideas for constructing a new way to see the world and to widen the lens that helps all of the groups of color and their white co-resisters to move beyond the oftentimes inordinate amount of focus upon the desires of individuals with power versus the general welfare of everyone. What kind of world is possible? This is an important question for us to engage with and to use our most courageous visioning abilities in exploring it. As we all come together to engage in collective resistance to oppression, where can we look for examples of a world that is not governed by notions of dominating hierarchies, but where there is a sense of the value of the collective and the need to care for and about everyone? How can groups that are so diverse within themselves build bridges to others who are not just different from them but have their own inner group issues with Othering? Is this river simply too wide to cross? Where can the search for remedies begin, since everyone needing to engage in the effort is caught in the same circuitous white supremacy narratives, which are difficult to escape?
The primary premise in this conversation, which is not commonly pursued in discussions about race relations, is that the four major groups of people of color who have suffered the most from white supremacy need to find a new way to be resisters. There is rarely any attention paid to how working together can facilitate the formation of new resistance energy. Most of the discussions are based on looking at each group as a discrete individual unit, because their individual group diversity and histories are so complex that it is difficult to imagine any possible path for them to achieve long-term sustainable coalitions. Clearly, there are many challenges on the path toward us all engaging with each other, as I will show in this book, but the exploration of a possible way for this kind of reimagined resistance and formation within these four groups collectively is essential, and finding that path is a major key to creating a New World as is being imagined in this book.
A New World is one where concern for the general welfare of everyone is the primary governing principle, and people of color of all groups and white people can find a way to see one another as equals. We can engage with one another by recognizing our shared humanity and by sharing our unified commitment to being resisters.
Excerpted from “Bridging the Rivers of Difference: A Proclamation of Unity in Resistance” by Catherine Meeks. Copyright ©2026 Morehouse Publishing. Used with permission.
