Challenging the Limitations of Allyship

Performative activism involves actions that benefit a person’s image more than they create structural change. Strategies to avoid performative activism have gained prominence in media discourse as more non-Black individuals work to support Black Lives Matter activism and strive towards long-term transformation. However, allyship discussions ironically place white folks at the center of work BIPOC organizers have been doing for centuries.

Social media posts serve as common examples of potentially performative activism. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can provide active spaces for sharing resources and elevating the work and experiences of Black individuals and organizations. By posting, users can hold themselves and their followers accountable to maintain momentum. However, June 2nd’s #BlackoutTuesday drew criticism for causing more harm than good. The trend originated in the music industry, and the black squares that individuals posted drowned out important information for organizers in the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. Many also raised concerns of “slacktivism,” or easy action without creating significant change, and the lack of effort required to simply post a black square.

In the past, I often dwelled on why one voice or donation request deserved more space on an Instagram story than another, and I consequently avoided social media activism because I felt it was too easy for it to become performative or unfairly selective. However, I’ve recently re-examined the dangers of white silence and white apathy to consider the ways in which digital activism must extend into every action we take offline. While I currently see posting as an option to elevate tangible activist work within my communities, I also use the act of posting as a form of personal accountability to normalize anti-racist education daily and alter the spaces in which I am involved.

Campus organizations are platforms where students can enact lasting change by examining whom they have provided space for, how intersectional their approaches are, and how to address structural barriers in their work. In collaboration with editorial staff, I have a responsibility to significantly invest in making the campus newspaper I lead an inclusive platform that specifically elevates Black voices and writers. We must also reckon with the paper’s history of underrepresentation and limitations to coverage. I am taking small actions daily, such as thinking carefully about how to center Black voices without adding burden when sourcing for news articles. I am also planning future collaborations with existing organizations and writers on campus in order to elevate BIPOC voices. However, this is an ongoing process that requires collaboration and re-imagining the organizational structures that have long been in place.

Many Black writers, social media figures, scholars, and community organizers have published suggestions and resources on how to avoid performative activism and transition from serving as an ally to an accomplice with tangible steps. Donating, signing petitions, protesting, and contacting politicians are a few strategies, but please begin by referring to the resources they have already put extra labor into and compensate those that are doing this important work.

Here are a few examples to reference:

Performative Allyship is Deadly by Holiday Phillips
Black Lives Matter and the trap of performative activism by Thabi Myeni
Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad

As Holiday Phillips notes, performative activism is usually simple. It appears with outrage or disbelief, it avoids personal responsibility in systemic issues, and it receives praise from others. When posting on social media and identifying performativity, it’s important to ask: What work are you doing that no one will see? Who do you financially support? Who have you called out or held accountable? Who have you invested in personal conversations with to reflect on both the growing movement and long-term activism?

Along with a discussion of performative activism comes an important re-consideration of allyship and the limitations to the term. In “On Making Black Lives Matter,” Roxane Gay urges, “Black people do not need allies. We need people to stand up and take on the problems borne of oppression as their own, without remove or distance. We need people to do this even if they cannot fully understand what it's like to be oppressed for their race or ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, class, religion, or other marker of identity. We need people to use common sense to figure out how to participate in social justice.”

The organization Indigenous Action highlights the “ally industrial complex,” or the capitalist work that activists enact to address “issues.” This work primarily advances their careers and enables them to gain power by benefitting from the struggles of communities they claim to support. In the zine “Accomplices not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex,” the authors present the limitations to allyship, arguing, “Where struggle is commodity, allyship is currency. ‘Ally’ has also become an identity, disembodied from any real mutual understanding of support. The term ally has been rendered ineffective and meaningless.” Rather, accompliceship involves direct action, accountability and trust. Willie L. Jackson writes that the work of an accomplice is not comfortable and “might cost you something.” Accomplices understand both the less obvious or visible systems of oppression and acknowledge they do not have all the answers themselves.

This work is a process with no singular end goal or label to achieve. By focusing discussions around non-Black allyship, we are shifting focus away from the Black voices we aim to center, and in that way, this piece is, admittedly, somewhat contradictory. Hopefully with tools to more critically examine our own work, as well as the times it is more appropriate to simply listen or donate, we can de-center allyship discussions while continuously self-evaluating the impacts of our activism.

Let’s continue to hold each other accountable in making this a movement, not a moment.

Stay well,

Julia

Davidson student, avid planner, and baking enthusiast with a love for river-centered cities.