Notes on Allyship
To be an ally remind yourself:
You are not the only smart person in the room.
You don’t always know what you don’t know.
You don’t define the needs of others.
You don’t own my identity, my mind, my body, my hair, my creativity, my culture, my path, my destiny, my purpose, my morality, my capability, nor the heights to which I can rise.
I don’t need your consent to breathe.
I don’t need your permission to grow, to move about in the world, to make decisions, to determine my unassimilated place in a socially, politically, and economically motivated hierarchy.
I don’t need you to tell me what I can and cannot dream.
Here’s what I remind myself:
I reject the hierarchy, the patriarchy, and self-defined, make-believe supremacy and superiority.
I reject the “well, at least I’m not black” mentality, the derogatory blackface minstrel mindset, and thinly-veiled performative apologies.
I reject the notion of freedom without accountability: a progenitor of oppression and injustice.
(I mean, how can justice exist if freedom without accountability prevails?)
