How Does One Become a Good White Ally (Asset)?

Johnny Silvercloud
AfroSapiophile
Published in
12 min readApr 10, 2017

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I have to be frank with myself — I’m ruthlessly hard on white people. Not “those” white folks over “there”. Not “some” whites folks. I’m hard on white people, period. With that being said, the million dollar question keeps on coming up: How do I (white person) do this right? How do I become a good white ally? How can I be good at this?

I’ll have to admit: there was era where I explicitly operated in the sense of facilitating, educating and enabling “white allies” as they call themselves. To illustrate my perspective, I’ll have to help you visualize my observations — how come there is so many Tanooki suit black folks who are willing to live (and die) to upkeep white supremacy, but so few whites who are agents of the black side of town? I saw this just like if the United States (black = USA; whites = USSR) had millions of Russian spies in U.S. government, with minimum to none American spies in Russian government. Wouldn’t this be an intelligence gap, considered detrimental to “national security”?

As anything I pursue, I was dedicated to the task; I personally sought out white folks to be “agents” within the white side of town to effect change racially. This whole thing functioned just like a spy novel; there was much dysfunction, from white folks becoming damn near like Dolezal to white folks attempting to attack me personally. There was…

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Johnny Silvercloud
AfroSapiophile

20 yr U.S. Army vet turned analytical street photographer who talks about power, protest, and politics. Do not defend racism or sexism when I’m in the room.