On Accountability and the End of Allyship.

I was recently moved, in all directions, by this article There Is No Such Thing as a White Ally.

Please read it — please do not feel that you might not need to read it, nothing I say here will give you the ‘cliff notes’ to the work already done by Catherine Pugh, Esq.

Reading it woke me out of a place I did not entirely know I had been, although I had most certainly been stuck there for some time. It placed the final nail in the coffin of a beast I had been haunted by — what is going on with white folk requiring an invitation to move into action?!?

I had been trapped in a strange framework of codependency, the article presented a spotlight to me that I had become abusive. Neglectful. Neglect is abuse, and I had neglected to recognize that I was holding the relationship hostage. Allyship as a mode of action is something I had taken for granted, to such an extent that I had stopped asking if I was wanted in that role, and had become stuck wondering why it felt a strange kind of lonely.

A mentor of mine put it to me that I am fixated on helping, driven by an awareness of suffering, but the flip-side of that coin is that I am looking for others who need help. Am I waiting for permission? Do I need to be an ally?

We romanticize the idea of allyship — we all did really well against the Nazis, right?… Did we though? Did we really come together and strike against the rotten core of their philosophy?

Nope. No, we did not — because at the core of that shit was the same nationalistic, racist, bigoted, xenophobic, superior mindset, and clusterfuck of ideas that we are facing down now, again. We are always facing that bullshit down. I have a suspicion that ‘the good guys’ didn’t really move against the Nazis because they were Nazis, we moved against them because we didn’t want them to have the power. We wanted the power… and look at what we’ve done with it. Look at the USA post WWII, look 10 years after ‘good allies’ beat back that evil. Look at Emmett Till. Look 10 years after that and the terrestrial evil faced down by the civil rights movement. Look still, today.

We are not good people we white people, and in this country since we are in control we don’t really have the right to claim that non-white people are anything other than a reflection of our lacking. We are capable of goodness, we are moved into goodness, but I don’t think that we are good people. I’m not talking about original sin, nope — I’m talking about our passivity to the core of ills like racism, marginalization, oppression, and white supremacy.

[I want to clarify that above statement, I am in no way attempting to take the agency away from BIPOC, I am simply stating that while white people wield power, and refuse to share power, that we have zero moral high ground from which to judge others].

So why would I consider myself to ever be an ally? You see, I am a social worker — being an ally is interwoven into my identity. Over the past 18 years I have worked in collaboration with others: as an advocate; as a mentor; as a protector; as a counsellor; as a mirror; as an activator; as an ally.

It is not possible to be a social worker and to work alone, we practice in partnership with others, it is part of our creed, and we are moved into action by the cry of injustice. The principle reasoning for becoming a social worker is to help others. It is a helping profession. Allyship within social work is wholly about partnership: client as expert; client as lead; client as arbiter; client as identifier of their need. One must walk the line between active engagement and benign passivity.

- I’ll take a moment out here and acknowledge the problematic nature of state sponsored intervention through which much of social work gets its mandate. Western ideals and ideation underlines much of social work intervention; the same is true for psychiatry and medicine. There is an active long-standing debate going on within social work about challenging modes of oppression and discriminatory practice that are handed down through the systems of power. Social work sits at a strange intersection between being literal ‘Agents of the State’ and being activists against systemic oppression and marginalization. I would also like to acknowledge that social workers are by no means homogeneous or altruistic, or even nice people. We are working on that.

I truly believe that one is raised within social work — my mentors instructed me, they are professional figures and members of the public alike. Social work is the moving into and awakening within a way of being that utterly redefines you as a human being. I am lucky in that I had strong mentors, predominately women, often women of color, who raised me by helping to dismantle the systems that I had been born into. The action that followed was radical engagement, radical in the most empowering sense — the action of helping to lift others, to help clear an alternate pathway for their lives.

Working within marginalized communities a social worker can often find oneself in the background, stepping forward to enact power before leaving it in the hands of the previously powerless. This is where I had become stuck. Helping.

Racism is the business of those in power. I am in power — I am white, male bodied, 45 years old, in good health, with social mobility and agency. If racism isn’t my business, then I do not know who it belongs to. I have long considered myself anti-racist, but am I always independently and actively anti-racist? Do I struggle with speaking out sometimes? Yes, sometimes I close my eyes and breath my way through my proximity to some bullshit. That there is privilege, at the center of that is a mix of shame and fear. That there is privilege, and it can be deadly.

I had become so stuck in the ideal of being an ‘ally to all’ that I had failed to see how passive and oppressive that can be. I’m a good ally too, good to such an extent that I am upset and frustrated by people in my life who don’t want to talk about racism, or homophobia, or transphobia, misogyny, or ableism. Upset by all of it.

Fuck, I am not a good ally at all — I’ve gone straight through active allyship, shot past performative allyship (with a sneer), and landed in some kind of oppressive allyship. I’ve checked my own privileges so often that I’ve almost made them belong to everyone else. Almost. Edging on that blade is ‘waiting for others to join’ and ‘waiting for the oppressed to instruct’.

- I’d like to take another moment out here and acknowledge the problematic activism work that does not include an intersection of marginalized groups. There are strong and valid arguments against white folk centering themselves in activism, i.e. setting up a protest and not inviting, including, consulting with, taking leadership from the groups at the center of the cause. That is messy, and by messy I mean not helpful. Activism does not require others, but it should most certainly not be excluding of others. I genuinely recognize how many folks are struggling with ‘what to do and how to do it’, but that is where we grow — we push through that struggle and emerge, hopefully with the wisdom to not repeat said struggle. That should be celebrated, but often it is felt as scornful or shameful. It is an opportunity to grow, turn toward it.

Accountability is the most radical form of change, it begins with long periods of discomfort, hopefully it ends with reflection and realization:

I realize, because it has been shown to me, that my own fear of being wrong can hold me back from doing what is right.

I realize that my own shame about my proximity and passivity to wrongness can send me looking for the trope of a mother to comfort me (just think on the burden that women of color carry with that regard).

I realize that my own guilt for letting be done what I know is being done to BIPOC pushes an anger that burns itself out.

I realize that centering myself obscures the light of decency and what is right, or just.

I realize that knowing the work, and doing that work, are different from owning the work.

— I own the work that has to belong to people like me, to white people, because otherwise we burden it upon those who already suffer the consequences… and look at what we’ve done.

Accountability and allyship do not go together — we have to be accountable.