What is Ally-ship? Why Might Activists Distrust "Allies"?

What is Ally-ship? Why Might Activists Distrust "Allies"?

Someone asked me this recently, given the word "Allies" is in the title of the book I've co-authored with Allison Carey and Richard Scotch: Allies and Obstacles: Disability Activism and Parents of Children with Disabilities, and I decided to expand on my response here. As I write this, Black people all over the US are protesting against structural inequality and racism, Black Lives Matter responses to George Lloyd's murder and other murders of Black people by police. Many white people seek to be allies, sometimes trying and falling short, making this piece more directly relevant and urgent than I understood when I started this essay. I encourage people to go directly to the references, written by people of color and disabled people, whose conceptual work and activism on these issues I am merely amplifying.

What constitutes ally-ship and why people have come to distrust the term is a distinction between words and deeds. Recent critiques I’ve seen online distinguish between allies who do things such as “like” and “share” progressive social media posts but don’t do anything else, versus those who are actively engaged. For example: by actively confronting people for racist behavior; staying with someone who is being harassed and confronting or documenting the harassment, and; joining in protests in supportive and responsive ways while deferring to movement leaders. Symbolic and passive expressions of ally-ship are not enough.

In the past, and certainly in many examples we discuss in our book, active engagement was considered an essential and inherent part of ally-ship. Recently there has been a more nuanced understanding of instances of hypocrisy, betrayal and misuses of the term ally-ship in social justice activist contexts. Harmful and exploitative expressions of transgressive transracial, transability, and terf practice in recent years has led to the need for more nuanced distinctions of how the use (or non-use) of power and privilege on behalf of others might (or might not) constitute ally-ship. 

There is also the question of whether ally-ship is even wanted at all in particular contexts, or is explicitly rejected. We discuss this explicitly in our book.There are people and groups who label themselves as allies and then do harmful things (autistic paaarents and Autism $peaks, for example). Since the term ally-ship has been so misused, people now distrust it. Words offered as replacements or alternatives to ally include co-conspirator, accomplice, comrade. These powerful words clarify intent, especially in moments of action, during tumultuous protests, where it is sometimes unclear who is acting in whose interests and why. Whatever the word choice, allies are called on to listen and be responsive — not to take over, not to change the narrative, and most certainly not to engage in power struggles or steal time and energy from the people they claim to want to help.

References Cited:
Carey, A., Block, P., Scotch, R. http://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000009747
Indigenous Action http://www.indigenousaction.org/accomplices-not-allies-abolishing-the-ally-industrial-complex/comment-page-2/
McKenzie, M. http://www.blackgirldangerous.com/2015/11/ally-theater/
Building Allies https://www.buildingallies.org/blog/privilege-and-the-three-phases-of-active-allyship-part1/
Millner, D. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/03/518184030/why-rachel-dolezal-can-never-be-black
Move to End Violence https://movetoendviolence.org/blog/ally-co-conspirator-means-act-insolidarity/
Stevens, B. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1705/1755
Souza, L. https://medium.com/@Luisa29/understanding-terfs-their-history-thought-and-activism-896cbebc3e25