What many pass off as "allyship" is actually a kind symbiosis that seems mutualistic on the surface, but is deeply parasitic, with white ppl leeching off the labor and suffering of poc, attaching to our coattails, getting credit for our work, getting credit for our *existence.*
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Their "diversity work" may do some net amount for poc good in the world (due to how frickin' awful the world is to poc) but is still mostly if not all self-promotion. That's not enough. Clownfish can do symbiosis. Allies must do more.
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There IS a time and place for self-promotion, to advocate for yourself. If you're a scholar, it's literally your job to promote yourself and sell your work. And equity work is real work that deserves recognition and compensation.
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The problem is when ppl won't admit, can't even see that self-promotion is the greater part of what they're doing, at the expense of poc. White scholars and public intellectuals working on race, post-/decolonial studies, ethnic studies, etc. all need to grapple with that.
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You are building a career, a name, cultural and financial capital, recognition as "good white person," all off of white oppression of poc. And not that there isn't a place for you doing this work, but you need to recognize that that's not allyship.
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If you don't face up to that in a real way, you're a parasite. You face up to it by prioritizing being a real ally, giving something up and understanding why decency demands you do it. "Time and effort" don't count if it's anything that accrues prestige or recognition to you.
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Nor does being a voice for poc or amplifying poc voices at no cost to your own visibility, often increasing your own visibility, in fact. Same with acquiring, "curating," or publishing off poc scholarship when you have literally made that your job.
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If that is all or mostly what you do, you are affirming and profiting off the system that says you're the only one with a voice, that there's no room for poc except through you.
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Allyship means truly giving something up for nothing in return, nothing that benefits you. Small things, like listening more than you talk, apologizing without making excuses for yourself, fixing your mistakes without taking up more space and energy from poc.
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Taking feedback and criticism graciously from friends and non-friends alike. Helping poc colleagues and students when you don't have time to spare and no one but them will ever know or thank you for it. Not making that help contingent on poc validating you as a good white person.
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And giving up bigger things. Funding, a place on a panel, a keynote. A job. Refusing participation in conferences and events that erase or appropriate the work of poc, or whose organizers and/or participants are known to be racists and to have excluded and mistreated poc.
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Sticking your neck out to stand up for poc, even against white friends and colleagues at the cost of burning bridges you don't think you can afford to burn. And doing it publicly, not just in whisper networks, not just confessing to your poc friends that you feel bad about it.
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Give up something that HURTS you to give up. Something you don't want to give, something that makes you lie awake nights trying to talk yourself in and out of it, telling yourself it's the right thing to do even if you hate it, even if you might regret it.
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This is why white public engagement in racial equity and justice is so hard to believe in. Because there's so little evidence to show that it's anything more than a white progressive knowing what side their bread is buttered on. If that's not true, then prove me wrong.
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End of conversation
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