We are excited to welcome you back to campus! We would like to kick off the new academic year by going over basic concepts of allyship and highlighting healthy ways of understanding and practicing allyship and advocacy on our campus. We hope some of the questions raised in the tips today can be used for you to expand the discussion of your roles and engagement as allies throughout this academic year.
Typically, allies are “individuals outside of the disadvantaged groups who become engaged in individual and collective actions geared toward social change.”1 For example, male colleagues can be allies for their female colleagues, White faculty can be allies for racially minoritized faculty, cisgender and heterosexual faculty can be allies for people with minoritized gender identities and sexual orientations, and U.S. citizens writ large can be allies for developing countries suffering from global environmental injustice. Individuals holding privileges based on their social membership can be allies if they actively address the inequities that marginalized communities experience and if they proactively advocate for them.
There are various levels and definitions of allyship. We often believe that allyship can be expressed in the form of expressing outrage for unjust actions and solidarity for marginalized individuals and communities. This type of allyship is, in fact, categorized as performative allyship. Performative allies receive rewards and recognition for their expression of support, yet their continuous efforts to tackle the inequitable practices deeply rooted in our organizations and society are not necessarily accompanied by their daily lives. Thus, while performative allyship can drive positive changes by increasing public attention, Philips warns that allyship that “begins and ends with hashtags” cannot dismantle the system that makes it possible for discrimination (both explicit and implicit) to continue.
Instead, what allies should pursue is critical allyship. This means that allies use their privileges in actionable ways to end the system that is built to give them greater privilege. Johnson and Smith suggest this allyship is action-based rather than expression-based, is a journey rather than a destination, is collaborative rather than occasional “benevolent actions” for others, and is decentering rather than a spotlight effect.For example, allies can use privilege and power to highlight the works of women and the way that they use and construct knowledge. They can also work behind the scenes to investigate and improve pay disparities. To sum up, critical allyship is to become life-long co-conspirators for dismantling inequity.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines unlearning as “to make an effort to forget your usual way of doing something so that you can learn a new and sometimes better way.” In the context of allyship, it is an intentional attempt to “let go of older operating systems and practices” that espoused racism and sexism and to acquire room for learning new methods. To do this, unlearning starts with becoming conscious of one’s own biases and privileges that tend to center on White and male-oriented knowledge and leadership. The second is trying to undo those practices and habits while actively seeking to learn ways to share and transfer privileges. If you are unsure about what to unlearn, here is an example of a question to answer as a practice of unlearning how privilege has worked for you: What is it about the system in which I ask for support and changes much less than my colleagues with minoritized identities do?
