San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
5 tips on how to be an ally
Being an antiracist educator in 2021 can feel like something of a contradiction.
“I work hard every day to put myself out of business,” says Akilah Cadet, who has a doctorate of health science in leadership and organizational behavior.
Cadet has made a career out of guiding non-Black people into allyship with the Black community through her Oakland company, Change Cadet. She’s also the chief creative officer at Represent Collaborative, a new media initiative that centers Black stories and works with longtime journalism professionals — many of them white — to build trusting, collaborative relationships with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) subjects.
The foundation of allyship is never opting out, says Cadet, and realizing that even having the choice to do so is a privilege afforded only to them.
“I don’t want to hear, ‘Oof, this is too much for me,’ because I don’t have the liberty. I don’t have that choice,” she says. “If I want any amount of success or any remote cousin of human decency, I have to learn how to live in your white space.”
With that in mind, Cadet shares her five principles of authentic allyship, and some tips for how to be a sincere and effective advocate for Black artists, as well as your coworkers and neighbors, for the long term.
Awareness: Be aware of where you are, whom you’re talking to, what you’re bringing to the table.This constant awareness can help you avoid performative allyship, reverse racism and white centering.
Privilege: It’s important to understand the privilege that you have, where it came from, and what you were able to provide for yourself because of it. Bottom line is, a white person does have more privilege than a BIPOC person, but that also means they have more opportunity to do good on behalf of the BIPOC community.
Discomfort: Be comfortable being uncomfortable. Use your privilege to speak up for someone. Ask how you can help. Get into the daily action of advocating for someone who doesn’t look like you or have the same lived experience as you.
Apology: When you say something that hurt someone or physically touched someone in a way that caused harm, just apologize and don’t be defensive.
Learning and unlearning: Every time you become aware of your privilege, or you’re comfortable being uncomfortable, or you apologize for something that you didn’t know was racist or hurtful or offensive, you are learning and unlearning from that experience. It helps you move forward, and that continuous process is what’s needed to keep people showing up for the long term. There’s no end date for allyship.