I want everyone to read this message and read it very closely as it amplifies the reasoning for my last video.
Most people who pay attention to my content recognize how careful i am with my words and how often i even entertain the feelings of people who benefit from the oppression of marginalized people. My videos are filled with disclaimers and soft language that makes people in majority classes feel welcomed and comfortable. All too often i pander and gently handle people who benefit from the rape, murder and genocide of people. And at the end of the day thats a large reason why my content works. But telling this person that its possible for them to maintain internal biases that they were socialized with that they may unintentionally perpetuate was the last straw.
Let me make this explicitly clear; if you arent open to calling yourself out on your own shit you are not an ally. Your allyship is based in ego and your desire to be seen as a good person. Your allyship helps you and only you. It is not progressive and it is necessary in the maintaining of systems of oppression.
Calling myself out is the most uncomfortable and upsetting thing ive had to in my growing allyship to so many groups. At the center of my arguments is this desire to encourage empathy and care for people who will live lives you will never have. Unfortunately people like this do not care and i think its important for everyone to recognize there are people in our ranks who hold conditional support to out causes. This is why we should not prematurely celebrate people of majority groups who pay lipservice to our cause. No one needs to be celebrated to doing the right thing. As my momma used to say, you dont get a reward for doing what you’re supposed to do. Hold allies accountable. The people who support you will try to understand, the ones who dont will crumble and withdraw support.
Supremacy is easy to maintain, breaking it down is an endless battle and some are unfit for combat.
i’m gonna try to say this gently, because i understand that it’s easy to feel attacked in this situation, and this is something i had to call myself out on and struggled with…
here’s the thing about being an ally: it’s not about your ally status.
by constantly checking and deconstructing our own internal biases and looking for biases elsewhere we are trying to break down systematic oppression and help to overcome centuries (sometimes millennia) of oppression.by saying that you feel invalidated by being told you’re inherently problematic as a white/cis/abled/whatever person, you’re making this about you.
the point of being an ally is that it’s not about you. it’s about the affected group of people and their voices and their struggle. we’re here to help them be heard and to support them however we can, but ultimately it’s their fight to win.and really even when you’re an ally for a while you slip up sometimes. i’m queer and nonbinary and i still forget to use ze/hir pronouns. i still assume people are straight. i still catch myself saying stuff that enforces the gender binary without thinking. if i can be queer and trans and still think that stuff then how can i be a perfect ally to people of color? the point is when you live in a society like ours that enforces these hierarchies so harshly, next to no one is going to be able to perfectly reject those norms and support others, and those who do are overwhelmingly going to be part of the oppressed group(s) in question.
perfect allyship isn’t something you are ever going to attain, no matter how hard you work. that’s the bottom line. being an ally requires diligent work and attention to your behavior, it may get easier but it’s never gonna become something you don’t have to put effort into. if that makes you want to give up then you probably weren’t all that good an ally to begin with.
i’m happy to keep hearing these critiques, i want to be someone who tries to be inclusive and supportive of people of color and i’m happy that amazing people like kat are willing to put a lot of effort into teaching us how to do it because it’s not their duty to do that. for some it’s a job, but it’s mostly unpaid when it takes place on the internet. doing stuff like this is incredibly generous. we could learn to be allies by reading a bunch of complex books and articles from scholars (which i still do, i honestly enjoy that) which might end up taking years because you’d have to start in the 1700s. but people are taking the time to condense all of that for our benefit and i think that’s worth paying attention to, even if it may not be focused on sparing my feelings as much as possible.
“erfect allyship isn’t something you are ever going to attain, no matter how hard you work. that’s the bottom line. ”
yes yes yes
as Jay Smooth says:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbdxeFcQtaU
you can’t say “I’m a clean person so I don’t have to wash” – you’re clean because you keep checking yourself for dirt and washing it off
similarly you can’t say “I’m a good ally so I don’t have to keep working at it” – if you’re a good ally you keep checking yourself for racism/sexism/ableism/bigotry/bias of all kinds and working to get rid of it.
