Andrew Lee Nicole Cardoza Andrew Lee Nicole Cardoza

Go beyond allyship.

The uprisings of last summer against police murder and anti-Blackness led to quite a few folks loudly proclaiming themselves allies. You can buy a digital print-at-home poster declaring “I am an ally” over a clenched Black fist (Etsy) or a shirt with a similar fist and the word “ally” in capital letters underneath (Etsy). You can write an article expounding on all of your social positionalities and personal privileges, announce that you take yourself seriously as an ally, and close the piece with the sentence “let’s promise to listen” (HuffPost).

Happy Tuesday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. Many people feel spurred into action because of the series of violent events from the past two weeks. Today, Andrew shares more about the importance of solidarity, not allyship, as we collectively commit to reimagine the world we live in.

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By Andrew Lee (he/him)

The uprisings of last summer against police murder and anti-Blackness led to quite a few folks loudly proclaiming themselves allies. You can buy a digital print-at-home poster declaring “I am an ally” over a clenched Black fist (Etsy) or a shirt with a similar fist and the word “ally” in capital letters underneath (Etsy). You can write an article expounding on all of your social positionalities and personal privileges, announce that you take yourself seriously as an ally, and close the piece with the sentence “let’s promise to listen” (HuffPost). 

In her piece on white feminism, Nicole wrote of the need for “white women [to] decenter their own narrative and elevate others instead” (Anti-Racism Daily). Some of the language around allyship does the opposite: instead of highlighting the voices and needs of those most impacted by racism, sexism, or queerphobia, it singles out white, male, or straight and cis allies for praise and adulation. Self-centered allyship in the struggle for racial justice can veer dangerously close to white saviorism (MSN). They can divert radical movements into “a self-help book for white people” as more attention is paid to processing white guilt than stopping Black death (Wear Your Voice).

Another problem with centering allyship is that self-declared allies get to decide what allyship entails and whether to engage in it. Support for Black Lives Matter crested before the shooting of Jacob Blake last August as people and brands rushed to announce their status as allies publicly. After that, white support for the movement “grew soft, like a rotting spot on a piece of fruit” (New York Times). For a moment, allyship was in fashion. When the moment passed, many of those allies slunk back to the sidelines. 

To center and celebrate allies as exceptionally interesting and virtuous often goes hand-in-hand with the belief that the alternative to allyship is neutrality. We might think that white supporters of Black Lives Matter are especially noble because their other white peers are instead neutral bystanders. 

Indigenous Action forcefully critiqued this understanding in their influential zine “Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex” (Indigenous Action). Being an ally to indigenous people, they wrote, has become “currency,” “an identity, disembodied from any real mutual understanding of support,” a term “rendered ineffective and meaningless.” 

To move beyond allyship means recognizing that the starting point isn’t neutrality. Citizens actively, materially benefit from anti-immigrant policies. Non-Black people benefit from anti-Blackness. The starting point for settlers is benefitting from settler-colonialism. As the zine puts it, non-indigenous people need to begin “to articulate your relationship to Indigenous Peoples whose lands you are occupying.”

If the starting position is not neutrality but complicity, we’re called to do more than declare ourselves allies, change our Twitter bios, or buy social justice ally wall art. Whereas allies center themselves, “accomplices are realized through mutual consent and build trust. They don’t just have our backs; they are at our side, or in their own spaces confronting and unsettling colonialism.” This isn’t just a semantic difference. It’s a different way to think about and practice solidarity: through centering those most directly affected and joining in the struggle, through direct action and confrontation, to dismantle systems that oppress them even as they benefit us. 

An accomplice is, of course, someone who aids another in committing a crime as defined by the criminal justice system. As Code Pink puts it, “liberation requires being accomplices in resisting the legitimized forces of social control” (Code Pink). There are many roles that people can take to support social movements, from being at the front lines in the street to doing jail support or media work or a thousand other things. But self-identified allies should remember that dozens of people have already been arrested in Minneapolis following the police murder of Daunte Wright (ABC). Those people, many of them people of color, put their bodies, their freedom, and their lives on the line. Some may face legal repercussions for years to come because of these arrests. The way to honor that struggle isn’t by taking the easy way but deepening our commitments to listen, o learn, and to fight to uproot a system that kills and oppresses some while enriching and protecting others. In the words of Angela Davis, “When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime” (American Public Media).

It’s time to go beyond allyship.

Key Takeaways

  • We should shift attention from the struggle against oppression to the virtues or guilt of allies.

  • Those who choose not to be allies aren’t neutral bystanders but rather beneficiaries of systems of oppression.

  • Benefitting from oppression calls us to engage deeply with communities in struggle and realize that we are personally implicated in the destruction of unjust systems.

  • To be an accomplice is to listen, learn, and take personal risks in the fight to dismantle systems of social control and racial injustice.

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Nicole Cardoza Nicole Cardoza

Study Hall! How to be a better ally, petitions, and plastics.

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Thank you, thank you for your thoughtful questions this week. We get some nasty mail (who knew Trader Joe's was so controversial) so I truly appreciate every kind inquiry mixed in. Today we're diving deeper into all the key themes we outlined this week.

For the new readers, we know there's a lot of content to catch up. We're working on organizing the first 50 days of content into a book or course for easy review. Interested in helping us out? Send a message!

We're posting daily recaps on Instagram @antiracismdaily and will be holding more Study Hall sessions on our Patreon starting next week! Excited to keep learning with you.

This email is free but you're welcome to make a one-time contribution on our website or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza). Or, pledge $5/month on Patreon. 

Nicole

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TAKE ACTION

1. Reflect on the questions prompted by our community.

2. Ask yourself two questions about one of the topics we discussed this week. Discuss these questions with a friend or colleague.

GET EDUCATED

You referenced the criticism that a white / white-passing person advocating for TJs to change their packaging. How should white allies support movements, then?
From Don't Americanize other cultures on July 22

It's important to center the voices of marginalized people in any movement. Sometimes, intentionally or otherwise, allies will co-opt movements already started by people of color. Often white allies, benefiting from their power and privilege, will gain more attention and progress with this movement, and consequently, the voices of BIPOC people get lost in the mix.

I was surprised that Bedell's petition didn't mention Viviane Eng's article – or the fact that Trader Joe's had already responded to Eng and said that actions to change the names were in progress. I also was surprised to see that there weren't any quotes from people of color on their perspective, or any co-creators of the petition that identified as people of color. As a result, it is Bedell that is centered in the press and interviews.

This example is relatively harmless, but often, it can lead to more dire consequences – like workplaces creating new programs and initiatives without the input of the people impacted, or political movements that don't reflect the needs of the communities experiencing harm. When doing the work, ask who else needs to be in the room. Consider who may already be doing the work, and how you could amplify them instead of creating your own campaign.

The petition for the bridge name isn't what all the local leaders in Alabama want, but you encouraged us to sign it anyway. Why?
From Honor the legacy of Rep. John Lewis on July 21

Petitions are powerful for a few reasons, even if they're not successful. First, they help raise awareness of issues, especially as they grow in popularity. They're also good for swaying public opinion. In this case, more encouragement towards Governor Kay Ivey to change the name isn't a bad thing! Also, signing a petition keeps us all informed of how the issue progresses after it passes from the headlines, and I think this is an important conversation to stay subscribed to. You can learn more about the power of petitions in the NYTimes. One of you lovely readers sent me a WHOLE email about the power of petitions weeks ago, but it's now lost in my inbox. If you're reading this and remember sending, kindly forward to me again!

Also, remember that signing a petition doesn't magically make things change. Alabama local leaders are the ultimate decision-makers in changing the name of the bridge, so have full capacity to make the decision. I am hoping that the creator of this petition is planning on working with the community, and not create a massive battle to have it done his way. I noticed after I wrote this email that there's now a nonprofit organization attached to the cause. It doesn't have any team listed on the website, so I'm not sure about any local representation behind it.

If I had seen a petition that was designed for the local community, I would have added that in its place. Either way, I feel that our efforts overall are more useful in advocating for the Voting Rights Advancement Act, but I know some of you already did that from our voter suppression newsletter! I try to give multiple ways for us to take action so we can get in the practice of doing so.

My family and I decided that moving to X community is best for our budget and lifestyle, but it's a gentrifying neighborhood and we would be part of gentrification. What should we do?
From Protect your community from the harm of gentrification on July 20

It's great that you're recognizing that you're part of the problem. Whether or not we like to admit it, we are all working in a systemic that's inherently inequitable and often complicit. That's why this work is so critical.

I shared this resource at the end of the newsletter, and it's worth revisiting in full:
https://newrepublic.com/article/144260/stop-gentrification

And also recommend this article about gentrification in SF: 
https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/gentrification-sf-oakland-san-francisco-vallejo-13293754.php

Put short, be prepared to take on the responsibility of protecting this new community from harm. Get involved in local politics and support community organizers advocating for housing justice. If that sounds like too much work or too much of a burden, consider whether you deserve to join that community at all.

"

There's no 'get out of jail free' card. You can't do all the right things and absolve yourself so that you're no longer a gentrifier, just like you can't no longer be white. But you can check your biases, acknowledge your privilege, and fight the systems that create gentrification.

Megan Orpwood-Russell, an organizer for housing advocacy group YAH! (Yes to Affordable Housing!) in SFGate

Trump is a racist president! And Biden is racist, too! What president HASN'T done something racist?!
From Know our racist presidential history on July 23

Trump had a whole newsletter dedicated to him back in June, and Biden isn't a president, but yes, as many of the resources we linked to state, is not perfect. (Biden will get much more coverage here as the election nears). And if the exercise made you realize that perhaps all of our presidents have become complicit in practices and policies that uphold systemic racism, including Barack Obama, then the exercise worked. And although some presidents have clearly been much more egregious in the harm they've created, we have to understand how we got here, how we're still here, and how necessary it is to choose differently this time 'round.

Also it's important to note that presidents alone are not responsible for systemic racism. In fact, take this same level of criticism to your local representatives and policy makers, many of whom are perpetuating the same systemic oppression in your local community.

Why should we still recycle if it's not working? Especially if environmental racism is bigger than ourselves?
From Reduce your plastic consumption on July 24

Individual actions are critical to the work we do, even if we're collectively not making progress. The articles mentioned that decreasing our consumption can fundamentally transform the future, so it would be a miss not to hold ourselves accountable.

Changing environmental racism systemically calls for much broader initiatives that, in this case, weren't directly rooted in plastics. But don't you worry – we'll be doing much more to address environmental racism in our work moving forward.

If you're ever reading this and think "goodness, we should also be doing this and this and this" as part of our daily action, that's amazing. Do it! Especially if you see ways to address these issues in your own community. We're working to add more localized actions to our newsletters, but right now we've got readers signed up from all over the globe and very limited targeting options. However, you can sign up for ARD Actions based on your community by texting "ARD LOCAL" to (718) 715-4359.

Also, kudos to Leigh and Cody for noting that our first action could have been worded better – because not consuming plastics altogether is more important than finding eco-friendly alternatives. Don't throw out something old to replace it with something eco-friendly! Cody recommended the following change:

Choose one product that you own that's made of (or packaged in) plastic. Use it until it is broken or exhausted, and then once it breaks either don't buy a new one or replace it with an eco-friendly alternative. Here's a list of Black-owned eco-friendly products.

CLARIFICATIONS

From Know our racist presidential history on July 23
The internment of Japanese-Americans in California indeed happened in World War II, not World War I as our article states, which will be fixed in our archives. Thank you to the reader that pointed out that internment also happened throughout the Southwest, not just in California (Archives).

Miscellaneous
A reader noted that our emails have readability issues in dark mode. I'll update our template to fix that for the week ahead.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.

Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza

Read More