To be an ‘ally,’ you must do the work
Three experts offer insight on how people can fight against racism
As a surge in racial tensions across the U.S triggers a wave of demonstrations around the world, people of all ethnic groups have joined the movement as self-professed allies.
For a deeper understanding of what constitutes being an ally, the Star asked Denise O’Neil Green, vice-president of equity and inclusion at Ryerson University; Rinaldo Walcott, a University of Toronto professor; and Toronto Black activist/author Desmond Cole, who recently published a book titled “The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power,” to decipher the difficult concept of allyship.
“I want people who are willing to get down in the struggle and fight like it’s their life,” Cole said. “There is no easy path to allyship. Sharing a hashtag, but not being willing to ever sacrifice anything for Black people — not allyship.”
The May 25 death of George Floyd — captured on video as a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck during an arrest — set fire to long-simmering concerns about police brutality against the Black community. (The officer is facing charges, including murder, in Floyd’s death. He and three others have been fired.)
Green said even the term “ally” is becoming problematic because it’s used so frequently.
“The idea of allyship isn’t something that’s an identity,” said the Chicago native. “It’s very much an ongoing journey and an active process that one has to practise every day. It speaks to taking on the problem of antiBlack racism as your own.”
Cole is wary about the idea of people from other races claiming the word. “It’s not that I’m saying that people who are not Black don’t have anything to contribute to the struggle,” he said. “I just don’t understand where this term of ‘ally’ came from.”
Walcott is also struggling to delineate how the idea of allyship found its way into the lexicon of the modern civil-rights movement.
“I know that it’s being deployed as some kind of shorthand that means people are in some kind of solidarity with recognizing the suffering that Black people endure,” he said. “It’s a term that I never use. It obscures and covers up more than it reveals.”
Walcott said setting out guidelines on how to be a surreptitious supporter becomes problematic.
“Educating people about what it means to engage in anti-racist acts has shifted into this very strange procedural thing,” Walcott said. “If any white person in 2020 is asking how to be an ally, it means that they have not been doing their work.”
“Help us fight against police violence,” Cole said. “You can really know how committed somebody is by how interested they are in taking on the police.”
Though both Cole and Walcott criticized the very idea of providing guidelines as to how allies can make a meaningful contribution, they along with Green provided some insight into the rules of engagement.
Some of the sentiments circulating online and elsewhere indicates that allies can support the Black cause by not supporting organizations and corporations that promote hate.
Cole: The idea of staying away from corporations that do bad is on the right track, but the problem is capitalism. It is right to say that we shouldn’t support organizations and corporations that are racist, but capitalism by its nature is racist. The idea of letting some people have wealth but not other people falls along racial lines and it’s done on purpose. It’s the looting of the British and other colonial forces, who took all our wealth away and are still controlling it. Any income oppression is going to be based on race.
Green: In doing so, allies need to unpack and understand the complexities of different organizations … governments, corporations and other organizations can do things that harm the Black community, and speaking out against that is very important.
Walcott: People have always put their money where their politics lie and that’s always been a strong measure. If someone is knowingly supporting an organization that promotes hate, they don’t want to be an ally.
There is also a belief that donating to funds and support initiatives is a good way to rally behind the movement. How effective is that?
Cole: It’s great that Black community initiatives are there and people should donate to them and help them, however, it’s not the job of those organizations to do it all. When you see or hear racism, using your voice to stand up to that is more valuable than donating to a cause that’s not going to be in your workplace to stop the racism.
Green: It’s very important to lend resources to those types of organizations. People can do that without really taking on the true meaning of being an ally. When I see experts being tapped for different opportunities to address systemic problems, individuals who are white or not racialized tend to be heard more than those who are from that community. In being an ally it’s important to recognize that privilege that you have, and allow others to come in and speak to those issues directly.
Walcott: Donating does not make you an ally if you are not already doing all the necessary work. But it helps the organizations.
Should people who want to ally themselves with the plight of Black people avoid sharing content that is traumatic?
Cole: Not sharing them (videos of Black men being killed by police) again is a basic thing to do, but we have to understand why it’s not OK. Sometimes people share those videos because we think watching the violence will spur people to action. This idea that you have to see Black people suffering, in order to be able to care about them, is a more destructive idea than even the individual acts of violence. It’s not appropriate to say this is an educational tool. George Floyd did not die so that people could have personal reflection time.
Green: Images have the opportunity to awaken and educate, but it also has the opportunity to retraumatize individuals. When they bring up these images on television, I’ve started to turn away because I’ve seen it once and I don’t need to see it again.
Walcott: I think it’s important that we minimize the sharing of that kind of content, showing the degradation of Black peoples’ bodies and images of Black people being indiscriminately killed. We live in a social-media culture, where there is a morbid fascination with showing images of Black people being killed. Sometimes, not always, those images can be used to make a political statement.
How important is it for people from other races who want to get involved to have an understanding of the history of the struggle? Cole: How many people who say they’re an ally have never read a whole book by a Black person? It’s a lifelong journey that involves learning something. You can go find that information from Black people who have been writing about it for generations. It’s also understanding that Black people don’t come to this understanding because we’re Black. We have to study too. We can be ignorant and subject to racists’ ideas if we’re not educating ourselves.
Green: It’s extremely important for all communities, whether racialized or not, to understand the struggle behind anti-Black racism, with it starting from slavery, to Jim Crow, and it goes on.
Walcott: If one of the items on the (to-do) list is continually learning, reading, and studying the history of anti-Black racism and understanding its contemporary manifestation, most people are not committed to that right now. You need to do the work to understand why you need to be rallying with us.
There is this general idea that most people don’t stick around after the outrage has simmered.
Cole: There is a certain euphoria that comes from going into a crowd of thousands of people marching and chanting. But, then you go back to your life and the same conditions that you’re demonstrating against are still there. You have people who spend their whole lives trying to reduce police budgets and getting those funds back into the community. If that’s the only thing that you spend your time doing, it’s still worth it, because it’s a concrete action that you’re sustaining and getting better at over time.
Green: It’s a personal commitment that one makes. It means you’re going to start looking at yourself, understanding your own privileges and actually leveraging those privileges to benefit those who have been oppressed systematically under white supremacy. The diligence is needed after everyone returns back to their homes. Allies need to be aware that it doesn’t just end when the protest ends. Walcott: People who marched (during the civilrights movement) were representative of the sentiment that Dr. Martin Luther King and his crew were negotiating at the table. People come to activism in a range of ways and not all of us want peaceful protest. We inherited the history of destroying property. We did all kinds of things to point to the injustice of enslavement. We have to be very careful not to let our politics get romanticized into the fire hoses and the dogs being set on us.