Allies of Whiteness ⇥ thebaffler.com

Rafia Zakaria, the Baffler:

In recent weeks, as protests have raged through the country, as video after video of white entitlement and its consequences has surfaced, many white people have been wrestling with whether they are being good allies to black people and other people of color. This is an urgent and worthwhile reckoning. My category “allies of whiteness” may be inexact, but it encapsulates the silent supporters of those with overtly racist views, those who fight to keep up statues that celebrate slavery, those who actively create new structures of oppression.

This Juneteenth, and every single day, those of us with societal and structural advantages ought to reexamine the very structure that has disadvantaged the vast majority of people who do not. It is necessarily difficult and uncomfortable to acknowledge our own failures, but we must do better — far better.

See Also: Monique Judge on shallow corporate gestures, and Catherine Pugh, Esq. on why “allyship” is a myth.