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Who is an Ally?
The word ally comes from the Latin root word alligare which means "to bind to". An ally, simply put, is a person who will support and stand up for the human rights of all socio-historically marginalized groups.
An ally learns about the socio-historic underpinnings of marginalization and learns about the systemic challenges that minority groups can face. Allyship in practice refers to an ally educating themselves and learning about ways to champion and uplift marginalized persons around them.
How to be an Ally?
Evolving into an ally can be an lifelong process of education and unlearning. However, one can begin with a few small steps in the right direction:
Education
An ally should learn about the marginalized group they are looking to support. They should become aware of the socio-historic map thay led to the marginalization, and how the present society creates systemic barriers for the said group.
Unlearn unconscious bias
An important step towards allyship is becoming aware of how unconscious bias works and shows up in our daily lives. An ally should educate themselves about the added stress such biases can bring into the lives of the already marginalized and equip themselves to challenge and confront any existing bias they may have.
Spread Awareness
The natural progression for an ally then is to find ways to bring the spotlight on the causes and marginalized groups they are advocating for. True allyship begins with finding or creating avenues to spread awareness about their causes.
Call out discrimination
This becomes a significant next step for the ally. Whenever the ally is faced with discriminatory or prejudicial language or behaviour, they should seek to hold such actions accountable. It is necessary to step up to systemic violence which can show up as microaggressions at the workplace or as overt violence in a social or public space.
Affirmative Action
The ally should also investigate what are some measures they can undertake in real-time to affirm and alleviate the systemic challenges faced by a marginalized group or individual. This can look like provide a safe space as an active listener, or creating communities of support groups or taking part in protest marches to mobilize systemic change.
Learn inclusive language
In daily life the biggest role for an ally is to consistently affirm the systemic barriers and struggles that a marginalized individual can face. For that learning inclusive and affirming language becomes vital. This helps the ally learn to validate the lived reality of a marginalized person and create psychological and emotional safety for them.
Representation matters
Often marginalized voices are underrepresented in mainstream discourses. An ally will build ways to center the voices of the marginalized. It can look like making space for marginalized narratives, hiring persons from marginalized groups and ensuring avenues for growth, advocating for authentic representation when it comes to pop media, etc.
Spotlighting Lived Experience
This is the final step in building allyship. Always remember that theoretical and second hand knowledge cannot replace the authentic lived realities of marginalized communities. So pass the mic and follow, read and champion marginalized voices.
Performative Allyship
Performative Allyship refers to gestures on the part of a person/organization that shows devotion to a cause. But this allyship is cosmetic at best, that is no real affirmative actions are taken to align to the cause.
Rainbow/Pink Washing
Rainbow/Pink Washing - This is one of the best examples of performative allyship, wherein an organization adopts a visual symbol of support towards a minority group, without taking any real look at their internal policies or infrastructure to improve working conditions for the said group. A good example of this is when large brands support gender equity in their global advertising, while sourcing their material from labour-intensive sweatshops in third-world countries which provide zero safety and dignity to its workers.
Othering
This is a behaviour mostly spurred by an unconscious bias, wherein a majority group within a work place can inadvertently exclude a marginalized person through their behaviours, language and/or actions.
Fetishization
Fetishization - When a minority group is focussed from a place of prurient obssession, this phenomenon is referred to as fetishization. When someone is being fetishized, the wholeness of their personhood is reduced to only a certain aspect of their identity, like skin colour, body weight or sexual orientation.
Tokenism
This is another insidious fallout of Performative Allyship. Tokenism is an superficial exercise of diversity, wherein an organization brings in a person from a diverse background to simply fulfil a professional or legal requirement, without really providing them the infrastructure to thrive in that space. For instance, when a company hires people from the LGBTQIA+ community without providing an awareness training to their existing employees, thus potentially creating spaces for workplace bullying or discrimination.