How to Be A Good Ally

Michael Skolnik is an amazing person who does incredible antiracist ally work. Today he published his White Ally Playbook. In addition to being a great primer that I can send to others, it also hipped me to the universally applicable Ally Commandments by the (equally fantastic) journalist and scholar Professor Melissa Harris-Perry. They are as follows:

  1. Don’t demand that those you are supporting produce proof of the inequality they are working to resist.
  2. Do recognize that the shield of your privilege may blind you to the experience of others of injustice.
  3. Don’t offer up your relationship with a member of the marginalized group as evidence of your understanding.
  4. Do be open to learning and expanding your consciousness by listening more and talking less.
  5. Don’t see yourself as the Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves.  Or Tom Cruise in The Last Samari.  You are not the savior riding to the rescue on a white horse.  Do notice that you are joining a group of people who are already working to save themselves.
  6. Do realize the only requirement you need to enter ally-ship is a commitment to justice and human equality. 
     Can someone etch these onto a large stone tablet for me? 

     

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