Allyship is a Verb

Ok, so the English teacher in me demands that I concede that "allyship" is, technically, a noun, not a verb. The important point is that allyship is not an identity. For most of my life I assumed that I was actively helping oppressed people simply because I thought that oppression was wrong. I identified as a liberal, a bleeding heart,a good white person. The problem with this is that I placated myself with this identity and thought it was enough. I never actually DID anything to help end oppression and injustice. Enter, allyship. According to The Anti-Oppression Network allyship is "an active, consistent, and arduous practice of unlearning and re-evaluating, in which a person of privilege seeks to operate in solidarity with a marginalized group of people." Allyship is NOT an identity; it is the collection of actions that we take every day to demolish systems of white supremacy; it is self-evaluation, it is re-learning history, it is speaking up when you are too afraid to do so, it is listening to people of color and recognizing that they have been doing social justice work from the beginning and that you have much more to learn than to offer. Whereas liberal is an identity and political alignment, allyship is an ACTION. It is a verb. I've been an educator in California Community Colleges for almost a decade, and I have learned from students and colleagues what life is like when you are not white, but only in the past year have I actively sought to learn about white supremacy and how it operates in myself and in society. Only recently have I spoken up, not just to those who agree with me, but to those who don't. Only recently have I created true friendships with people of color and actively sought to learn from them and work alongside them. Dr. Veronica Neal explains the entrance into social justice work, which for those of us who are white means allyship, as entering The Matrix. Once you start to see how fucked up our world is, you can't un-see it. The systems of white supremacy are insidious, vast, and intricate. Since Trump became president, I've meet a lot of white folks who want to move from liberals to allies. Make no mistake that this work is harder than you can possibly imagine. But if you are as fucking scared and outraged as I am of Trump and the global movement towards radical hatred and oppression, you only have one choice. Take the red pill.