Why I Don't Believe in Allyship
& what I recommend in its place.
For an in-depth discussion of this essay, check out Hot Take Think Tank episode seven.
In my early twenties, I found connection, support and meaning in the social justice subculture. Identity was paramount in this world—it was not uncommon to declare our gender, race, sexuality, religion, health issues and more when introducing ourselves. We did this because “lived experience” was the currency of the subculture: experiencing oppression granted a person expertise on that -ism (racism, sexism etc), whereas privilege meant you were permanently and constitutionally incapable of understanding the corresponding oppression. This logic extended to who could voice an opinion on a topic. For example, a white person was not supposed to develop their own understanding of racism; we were expected to defer to people of colour, which often meant black people specifically, and which was always limited to people who proselytized an identitarian worldview.
If you just ignore the people of the identity group that don’t agree with the perspective you’ve already developed, then all you’ve really gained is the ability to use someone else’s identity as a smokescreen for you own politics.
-Olúfémi Táiwò, The Dig Podcast
Allyship was a crucial concept in this world. It was the idea that privileged people should follow the leadership of the oppressed in the fight for liberation. It sounded very reasonable to me when I first heard it, and for many years I worked diligently to fill this role in regards to race. I followed directives without evaluating whether or not they aligned with my values. I nodded along whenever someone said white people were predisposed toward violence. I told myself that discomfort meant growth, and so I maintained friendships and relationships where insults and exclusion were commonplace. I would scrutinize the language and behaviour of other white people and quote POC identitarians like scripture. I voraciously backed up any claim of racism, even ones that I privately found iffy.
In other matters, I was the one in power. My gender and sexuality gave me free rein to treat straight men with contempt, condescension and hostility. I could tell them what to do and then insult them if they didn’t follow my orders. Such power was thrilling; I got a rush from having so much influence over other people (or at least thinking I did). To be frank, I expected nothing less than total submission from my “allies”, and they risked reputational damage if they crossed me.
I never called this vengeance. My comrades and I thought we were evening the score: passing the mic to people who had been powerless for so long. But as time passed, it was clear that we weren’t getting any closer to distributing power more evenly. What we’d done was invert the social hierarchy and place new people at the top. Weaknesses became strengths; sources of stigma became sources of pride. Within our small subculture, the powerless became the powerful. However, saying this out loud was a great way to get shunned.
Over time, who could speak on what became even more contentious. Being gay wasn’t enough to speak on gay issues because you might not be able to speak to the intersections with racism or transphobia. Power seemed to concentrate in fewer and fewer hands, and the longer your list of oppressions grew, the likelier you were to come out on top. In secret people started to joke about the oppression olympics, but no one would say anything publicly when the gold medallists misbehaved or mistreated people. Doing so would put a target on your back.
I remember a friend of mine telling me that the QTPOC (queer trans people of colour) scene in our city was shrinking and shrinking as people were kicked out one by one for various transgressions. She seemed worried that, before long, there would be no one left.
This all feels like a long time ago now. Since leaving this subculture, I’ve corresponded with a lot of people who have one foot in and one foot out. They find the social norms bizarre and unhealthy, but they still care deeply about injustice and they want to be a force for progressive change in society. I relate to this. There are plenty of real material inequalities that require our attention, and being able to sort them out from boy-who-cried-wolf situations will allow us to direct our activism more effectively. All claims of homophobia, sexism, racism or ableism are not equally urgent, significant or true, and the allyship model forbids us from acknowledging this.
Thankfully, there’s an alternative: good old fashioned solidarity. Solidarity requires us to treat one another as equals. Solidarity asks us to draw our own conclusions. It recognizes how much common ground there is to be found if we look for it, and how much we need each other if we are to create significant and lasting change. It does not make one group of people subservient to another in the name of justice. It calls for integrity and honesty, and acknowledges that we do our best work in the context of mutual respect.
If we want to build a mass left coalition that has any chance of winning concessions for regular people, we can’t keep our mouths shut when we witness power tripping, and we certainly can’t pretend that being mistreated is some sort of deserved karmic revenge that we need to accept. It’s time to revive the civil rights movement concept of judging people not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
Sometimes I think that the extreme fervour of my former scene is due to how young most of us were. But as I age, I realize that not everyone grows out of such behaviour. Some people will use whatever tools they have at their disposal to try and control the people around them and to punish those who resist; those in social justice land will do so with the language of oppression and the white cisheteropatriarchy. I think we owe it to our movements to recognize when this is happening, and to stop excusing and rewarding such behaviour.
The left has a long history of internal purges that has undermined its efforts. We are capable of learning from our mistakes and creating a progressive mass movement that is inviting, rigorous and effective. Solidarity is not magic—it cannot conjure such a movement out of thin air. But it can be the foundation, the even ground, where we come together to build.
(P.S. Can you tell which clown is 20-year-old me? Make your guess in a comment!)
These subcultures are in every sense anti-political. They exist not to change the structure of society but to perpetuate themselves to no practical political end. It most recently was borne out of the New Left which strived to find a new revolutionary subject since the racism and sexism of the so-called white working class disqualified it. Of course, the working class is diverse and not all white workers are equally racist or sexist or at all. My view is that the New Left was primarily a Middle-Class student movement which foregrounded culture as a result of their class status. Now professional managers speak the language of allyship entirely removed from any left-wing agenda. It is a way to advance your career. I don't think it is an overstatement, to say that this sub-cultural activity has harmed the cause of minorities that they profess to champion, particularly in comparison to how much the traditional left has accomplished.
Good stuff as usual. As a big white guy, I'm accustomed to being preemptively shunned. I don't hold it against people to make baseline assumptions based on their past deeply unpleasant or traumatizing experiences, but as you lay out it goes quite a ways beyond that kind of legitimate self-protective posture. I hope we can build a culture of solidarity that builds a real feeling of confidence while leaving room for people to challenge each other in constructive ways. It feels like a heavy lift, but in my experience things move a lot quicker when there's some kind of larger common project, so I put my hope in that.
My guess: red hat on the right.