Put Allyship Second
Or, what’s wrong with the modern obsession with being an ally
“Have you signed up for the newest resources-for-white-people-who-want-to-become-allies newsletter?”
“Where I can get those, ‘I’m an ally!’ bumper stickers?”
“I’m going to talk to my manager about allyship training in the workplace. Have you ‘done the work’ yet?”
If it seems like the word “allyship” is everywhere these days, it’s not just you. By all accounts, activism by the Black Lives Matter movement has in the past month vaulted this term to hitherto unseen prominence, if not introducing it into every American household then at the very least installing it in the social media feeds, inboxes, and corporate meeting agendas of Americans across the country.
What’s more, if the popularity of Google search terms accurately represents the relative amount of attention these terms receive “in the real world,” the rise of “allyship” is much more than a foggy impression. That is, if the trend line above reflects how Americans are actually thinking and talking, it’s not just you and it’s not just a widespread illusion: “allyship” has been on the minds of more Americans in the past month than during any other month in the past 16 years.
(If you’re interested in using Google Trends to track real-world phenomenon, check out the recent work of Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, who, along with many others, has used Google search data to predict coronavirus outbreaks.)
With that in mind, here are a few modest conjectures.
- Most Americans have either neutral or positive associations with “allyship,” meaning that the increased popularity of “allyship” as a search term reflects, in addition to curiosity, an increase in the number of people themselves interested in becoming allies.
- Most Americans who are newly interested in becoming allies are interested in doing so because “it’s the right thing to do”—where it is the pronouncements of a morally enlightened hyper-liberal minority that determine what does and doesn’t count as morally right and, therefore, what does and doesn’t count as true allyship.
So, what’s the trouble with allyship? Well, phrased this way, it’s not quite a fair question—for we should distinguish between allyship as a concept in ethics and allyship as the attitude enforced by the political minority at present holding America morally hostage.
While I have no particularly interesting stance on the former I find the latter incredibly problematic—and this even if the two in practice are indistinguishable. The trouble, as I see it, is that the individuals who at present have de facto assumed the mantle of moral leadership are putting the cart before the horse, the outcome ahead of the calculus. In other words, the trouble as I see it is that, if they’re to become allies at all, individuals are supposed to do so not because doing so enables them to be part of something larger than themselves—namely, a protest movement—and, even more importantly, not because it publicly announces their allegiance to the reigning ideology, but because they’ve arrived at this conclusion by way of their own reasoning
Perhaps surprisingly, some on the Far Left seem to share similar concerns, at least judging by their condemnations of the purely symbolic brand of allyship that those especially eager to signal their virtue adopt. And yet, to me, such critiques take issue not so much with allyship being ideologically freighted—the primary reason for concern in my book—as with certain forms of allyship being insufficiently or inappropriately conformant to the dominant ideology. Although similarly concerned with the historical origins of beliefs about allyship, that is, such critiques take issue with the brand of originating ideology rather than with the fact that it is ideology that is in a position to originate beliefs in the first place. They substitute one evil for another of the same fundamental kind.
So if allyship is second—or third or fourth of later, for that matter—what’s first?
Critical thinking: the working out of ideas, relationships, and conclusions by way of one’s own rational capacities; the assessment of all relevant evidence and its provenance; the evaluation of alternative explanations; the reliance upon logical reasoning. For any belief that plays a central role in organizing one’s life ought to be the product of reflection not indoctrination or expediency—at least in my book.
One would think that this kind of position ought to require no defense. After all, if today’s (faux) moral leaders have any trust in the validity or generalizability or value of their judgments why not let us, the uncivilized masses, arrive at the same conclusions ourselves? And anyway, isn’t allyship, like most other practices and beliefs, at its best when it comes from the right place?
To be sure, it’s possible that one arrives at the conclusion that one would like to be an ally by way of their own reasoning. And it’s even possible that many allies today have done so. All I’d like to suggest here is that, first, what matters is not so much the end belief as the path by which one has arrived at it; and second, the modern obsession with allyship, the functional role it plays in the liberal ideology, makes it in practice very difficult for anyone to become an ally in any true or honest or authentic sense of the word.
The takeaway, then, almost paradoxically, is that we ought to think for ourselves. And if allyship is what follows, all the better for those committed to allyship.
