On Whiteness and Allyship
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about race and allyship, and how one of the most frequent complaints we hear from white allies is the idea that if PoC don’t need their help defining issues of racism, and don’t want to hear their suggestions about how we should handle issues of racism, we are alienating them, we aren’t making space for them, and so, the reasoning follows, why should they help us? In response to this criticism, I started trying to come up with similes to clarify why it is so strange and absurd for white people to try to tell us about what we are already experts on. As I struggled with these similes — I will give an example in a moment — I realized that the Western colonial concept of “Whiteness”, (much like the Western concept of “manliness”, but that’s another essay for another day) requires indoctrination into a belief system in which, consciously or unconsciously, people who do not fit into that category are held to be slightly less than full, competent human beings.
The simile I tried to construct was that of a manufacturing firm in which Engineering is having a problem with Sales. None of the work Engineering is producing is what Sales wants, and Sales looks down on Engineering. Engineering is on a hiring and wage freeze, but it seems like nothing they can do is good enough for Sales. You are in Sales, but you want to be an ally to your friends in Engineering. You know a few people in Engineering, but that’s really your only exposure to the field. People in Sales, with no engineering experience, are always going to Engineering with their thoughts on what Engineering does every day, and how they should fix the situation with Sales by avoiding making Sales uncomfortable, for example by telling them that what they want is unreasonable. You want to advocate on behalf of Engineering, and you recognize that they are highly intelligent specialists with a lifetime of experience in their field, which you cannot begin to comprehend from your perspective in Sales. Do you help by A. Explain to Engineering what exactly they are trying to engineer and how they should go about it, or by B. Listening to Engineering explain the problem and what they think needs to be done to resolve it, and take that information back to Sales to advocate on behalf of Engineering to the rest of the Sales crew?
Most rational people will choose B, because they recognize the absurdity of a non-engineer trying to explain to engineers what their job is and how to do it. Similarly, if you assume that people of color are as intelligent and competent on average as White people, it makes no sense for White people to try to define the problems caused by racism for PoC, nor to explain to PoC what needs to be done to solve them. However, we encounter a crucial obstacle here, one that is at the heart of what it means to be White, which is that the social construct of Whiteness includes the unspoken agreement to refrain from making other White people uncomfortable. This agreement is, in my opinion, paramount to maintaining Whiteness.
We can see this in action when we examine what it means to “pass” as White; the first step is to embrace the values and goals of middle-class White culture, the second step is to eschew nonwhiteness, and the third step is to engage in the unspoken agreement that Whiteness and the values of Whiteness are correct. This correctness makes it an automatic error to challenge White behaviors, no matter how destructive they are to nonwhites; in other words, to make Whites uncomfortable by challenging White actions or values is always treated as error. Therefore, in order to maintain the unspoken contract to avoid making White people uncomfortable, the other unspoken contract must be engaged; the unspoken assumption that all nonwhite people are slightly less competent, slightly less intelligent, and slightly incapable of making their own way in a world in which they have experienced firsthand for their entire lives the racism of being always treated as less than.
Whiteness, then, in this explanatory model, is a social construct that protects a select group of power-holders, and those who identify with them and wish to hold that same power. This model explains why the boundaries of Whiteness are not strictly bound around race, but shift as groups of people achieve or lose economic power within the White-centered social system.
So using this model, we have this loop in which people who want to be allies to PoC, and who consciously despise the idea and results of racism, cannot seem to break the Whiteness contract of not causing White discomfort. White discomfort is aroused by treating people of color as fully competent adult human beings, by listening to what PoC have to say about the solutions to their own oppression and taking that back to tell to other White people. Instead of simply doing these things, we have this roadblock in which many White people want to help, but can only conceive of helping by telling People of Color what we should do. For example, by “brainstorming” what we can do to effect change, and by exhorting us to “be gentle with White folks who want to help”. No, brothers and sisters, YOU go be gentle with other White folks. If you want to help, don’t give us your benevolent racism.
No matter how well-meaning you are, telling us that we need your White brainpower to find the solutions to racism is, at the root of it, some condescending bullshit. If you want to help, recognize us as full human beings who are experts in our own fields, including the field of race relations, which we are forced to deal with daily and from which you are shielded by the White contract. If you want to help, get uncomfortable. Break the contract. Make other White people uncomfortable. Listen to us, and tell THEM. And friends, when you break that contract, get ready to, if only transiently, not be White. Get ready to be hated. You will experience a small taste of what it is like to be on the other side of that social contract and you will not like it, I promise you this. Maybe you will not-like it enough that it will deepen your empathy, and maybe you will embrace it, and maybe you will eschew Whiteness and fully embrace the fight for human equality. That’s all I can hope for; I think perhaps it’s all anyone can hope for.
