ABSTRACT
U.S. journalism is often critiqued for its reductive and dehumanizing representations of marginalized voices. Yet, characterizing U.S. journalism as uniformly reductive overlooks cases where journalists expressly humanize members of marginalized communities. Solidarity — defined as a commitment to social justice that translates into action — arises when journalists represent marginalized communities’ perspectives on their shared lived conditions and what needs to change. This chapter contributes an explanation of what solidarity means and why it matters for journalism that humanizes marginalized communities. It contrasts solidarity with empathy (a less substantive, yet more common, humanizing approach) in journalistic practice and illustrates this contrast using examples from field research on how local journalists humanized people experiencing homelessness in the case of the collaborative San Francisco Homeless Project. Solidarity shifts journalists’ focus from characters to shared conditions. Focusing on characters to evoke empathy merely proposes marginalized people’s humanity and attempts to justify it based on external indicators of worth and emotional relatability to comparatively privileged audiences. The logic of solidarity presumes this humanity and represents shared conditions that prevent members of a heterogeneous community from exiting poverty.
