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♃There Is No Such Thing as a ‘White Ally’ — “TNSWA” Part I.
Part I of TNSWA series. Racism is not mine, it’s yours, and it’s not called “help” when it’s your mess we’re cleaning.
I never use the term “White Ally” when I talk with family and friends. That’s because I detest it. A little twang of dissonance echoes every time it comes my way. My rage is not directed at the name, but its attending mentality. And the sobriquet itself implicates one of the most insidious sleights-of-hand in mankind’s history.
The logic behind the expression “White Ally” makes about as much sense as me going into your room, folding your affirmations and putting them neatly away, cleaning all the introspection off of your mirror, gathering your feelings for the laundry, and then you pick up your golliwog, put it away, and announce triumphantly, “We’re in this together, and I am totally committed to helping.”
Mmmm, not so much with that.
In my circles — Black or White, family or friend — I rarely discuss my rejection of the “White Ally” label’s underpinnings. I am hugely ambivalent about doing so, and have been for years. Why hurt people you love who are fighting very hard to do a really important thing?
Well, because Black folks are dying as we sustain this illusion, dying for a factual impossibility. Let me repeat that: Insulating you from feeling horrible is killing us. Saying it’s not personal sounds ridiculous, but, as it relates to you, it’s not. As it relates to anyone who looks anything like me, it’s the very essence of personal. And while I can live with your inner strife, I cannot live with black skin as probable cause. I cannot live with my son being hunted.
In a way that has never been more clear, the nation insists on paying for this lunacy of logic with the lives of Black women and men. There is nowhere left to even hide our babies. I will fight to the finish for my children. And I am not special — we all will fight for every brown baby. So listen carefully: We…
