so you think you’re an ally?
Yesterday, I stood in the shade of Fort Greene Park and delivered a concluding speech for "So You Think You're An Ally", a march organized by Selu (find them on Instagram!). This action was designed as a call-in rally for white and non-black allies, followed by a march and poetry circle centering black trans, queer, and nonbinary people.
I met Selu through Dyke March a little over a month ago. Since their first action, "No More Tears From Black Queers", Selu and I have been in conversation about what it means to be constantly asked to guide white allies towards productive activism, and out of those discussions, Selu created yesterday's action.
Writing this speech allowed me to re-address the ways in which I have censored myself in attempts to not alienate allies. Juggling the differences between addressing short term survival and long term change when interacting with people who don't experience the same level of structural violence is exhausting. But, to quote Andrea Gibson: "I want the heavy to anchor me brave, to anchor me loving, to anchor me in something that will absolutely hold me to my word".
These are my words, and I am holding myself to them.
“To be black, woman, queer, activist, organizer, is to be a permanent renter. To settle in white spaces, but only until the emotional cost inevitably goes up. When non-black people are presented with the opportunity to begin practicing allyship, they appoint us leader. We are left out of the conversation until you need a savior, until you need the hard work done, until you need a frontline warrior, until you choose to engage with our re-hashed trauma on your terms. These are white spaces, these are male spaces, these are heterosexual spaces, these are cisgender spaces, these are inaccessible spaces, these are classist spaces, these are capitalist spaces, and there is violence in their veins. We do not belong here, and yet you insist on dragging us into your room, because the conditions of your normalcy is the only place where you are willing to listen. You retain the comfort of your guaranteed tomorrows but beg us to help you learn, with soft voices and baby steps, doing our best to keep your sense of self intact.
My work is beautiful, and honest, and I am proud of it. But it exists because of systemic brutality. This work exists because of the rooms that we are not given keys to, the conversations that won’t pronounce our names, the trauma that sits at the tips of our tongues because it is the only thing the audience ever wants to hear. Viewer, putting an Instagram filter on my footrace with death and calling it allyship.
As the Black Lives Matter movement continues to sweep through the structures of this country, it is imperative to remember that calling for community safety requires an investment in personal accountability. When you call for decolonization, you must also recognize the necessity of turning that question inward. Decolonization is not only a structural goal, but also an individual pursuit. When you commit to this work, you must also commit to asking yourself: “Am I an ally for the sake of my emotions, or an accomplice for the sake of the vulnerable?”
If the most uncomfortable act of allyship you have done so far, is show up to a 2-hour march in August heat, then chances are you still see yourself as independent from the systems of harm. You are not. You cannot swoop in from the outside and make everything better. Lending your privilege to us by proximity does nothing to dismantle a system which requires someone be at the bottom. To call yourself anti-racist in a solely reactionary sense is to exist as an inadvertent agent of white supremacy. The friction of these power structures will halt you in your tracks the second that you stop trying. You did not create these structures, but you are responsible for how you proactively choose to interact with them. How are you upholding white supremacy in your day-to-day interactions? Where are you allowing yourself to be comfortable in a system built through self-propelling violence? Liberation is not a diversity task force assigned to bring different shades of faces to the table. Liberation, is taking a sledgehammer to the legs of the table, and then to the walls, and then to the roof.
This will be uncomfortable. There is no magical “other side” to get to, no place within the system where it suddenly gets easier. If it gets easier, then you’ve gotten complacent. You don’t get to mark on your anti-racist bingo card every time you show up to a direct action. You don’t get to finish reading the zine and then pat yourself on the back. You don’t get to share the same 5 infographics within your insular social media bubble and call it outreach. In order to claim that you are an antiracist accomplice, you must be actively living in the practice of it. White supremacy informs everything that you do - therefore, the dismantling of it must inform everything that you try.
These are not words I say to remove myself from the work, and if you are hearing me and feeling reassured, then you are missing the point. I am not here to teach, I am here to learn out loud. I have to practice recognizing where I am steeped into whiteness. Where I have been in hot water so long, that I’ve burnt out the flavor of community care. Where I am holding myself to the standards of respectability politics, where I am waiting to be invited into the room, where I use education as a branch of whiteness that I can stomach as a way to pry open the door.
But even in telling you this – I censor my experience. I keep my words beautiful, I remove my grief in exchange for the grounded, I translate everything through the lens of Eurocentricity. I do this because it is the only way I know how to beg you to listen to me. This, in all its honesty, is still the respectable version of me. I make it beautiful, so that you will stay and listen. And in doing so, I ensure that you will never do anything but listen.
In order for this movement to progress, you must let go of the instant gratification of reactionary performance. If you stand for us, then you stand for us even when we’re not watching, not speaking, not marching, not dying. This isn’t a feel-good project. You cannot wait for the next reading assignment from your token black friend. You cannot think yourself exempt from this criticism because you have more than one black friend. You cannot keep waiting for the next call-out and then jump to prove that you are one of the good guys. This is not a test to pass. You have to care enough to be wrong, again and again. You have to care enough to dig into the conversation, and not have it handed to you in all of its palatability from a makeshift stage in Fort Greene Park. Adopt an attitude of honest, ongoing, evaluation: who am I leaving behind? who am I excluding? who am I harming? Let these questions braid you into the practice of examining your life, and how you interact with it. Where can your imagination stretch beyond the outline of white supremacy? How many more stories are out there to be lived?
I cannot teach you the desire to learn. I cannot make you choose this. I cannot make you keep choosing this. I cannot earn my way into you embracing the uncomfortable. And so, I’ve decided to stop trying. I am walking towards the door of freedom, I am throwing it wide open, I am walking through, and I am not looking back. If you want to come with us, then you better grab the door handle, because we have set our sights on liberation, and we are done waiting for you to catch up.”