34: IDENTIFYING AND ADDRESSING PERFORMATIVE WHITE ALLYSHIP
Band aids made in different skin tones, Quaker Oats taking Aunt Jemima images off its branding, the Biden administration pushing for Harriet Tubman on the 20$ bill.. all of these are the latest examples of performative gestures undertaken by white allies in power. After the brutal deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery (only to name a few of many Black lives taken by white violence) white corporations and executives flocked to create statements, advertisements and symbolic gestures to assuage public anxieties and seize a PR moment amidst a time of national racial uprising. I remember my timelines were flooded with black square boxes, an array of hashtags and posts that were meant to publicly announce the solidarity of users with the Black Lives Matter movement.
In many ways this type of performative allyship adds insult to injury. An ally is defined as an individual from a non marginalized group who uses their privilege to consensually and thoughtfully advocate for a marginalized group or cause. Performative allyship is then when someone from a non marginalized group professes their advocacy for a marginalized group in a way that is either harmful or in a way that is not substantiated by their actions. We have all been susceptible to performative allyship in one way or another, myself included. For example I often express my care for reducing my carbon footprint, yet have not always put in the effort to compost.
When it comes to race in America, the problem of performative allyship is embedded in an unruly long history of enslavement, economic exploitation, and the murder of racially marginalized communities. In his canonical texts, Frantz Fanon, a renowned theorist and psychiatrist whose written works have informed the decolonial understandings of the Black Panther Party in the US, highlights the complex power apparatus used to keep Black persons compliant with the terms of oppression put in place and sustained over time. He establishes a supple argument to highlight the political and symbolic dialectics of the settler that alienate the collective “us” from the brutal reality of colonial violence and its consequences. In short, liberalism is more interested in the performance of advancement than it is in the practice of liberation. Liberation as a practice of decolonization requires a fundamental upheaval of racial, class, and social hierarchies, all of which would not be profitable for white capitalism. Therefore, it is not surprising that liberal whiteness offers shallow, symbolic gestures of equity that do not disrupt the privilege and comfort of whiteness. White performative allyship offers hollow, static solutions that do not have to address the inequity and disparity that the privilege points to.
According to a 2016 survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, 17-25% of white Americans believe that discrimination against white people is “as big a problem” in America as discrimination against minorities. In a post-Obama era, the entitlement of white denial is ever more persistent, dangerous and ultimately fatally harmful for the lives of non-white communities. If the Trump effect had a silver lining, it is certainly the exposure of white nationalist rhetoric embedded as a value in the inception of this nation. Activist Sonya Renee Taylor describes this phenomena as “privilege comforting”, an effort of white privileged allies to assuage the anxieties of imperial capitalism with empty gestures that they can receive praise for as a reassurance of domination.
As we enter a new age of white accountability, it is not enough to institute performative measures that do not address the reality of inequity and disparity caused by white supremacy. While the first step is self-education (which liberal white americans have taken to with a recent skyrocketing in anti-racist book sales), the second pivotal step is action. As singer Joan Baez reminds us, “action is the antidote to despair”. Now more than enter POC communities across the United States are pushing for legislation, policy, and reparations that result in material impact for the most affected communities. As we collectively engage in the work of reparations-inspired action the time has come to call out white performative allies and call in accountability. There is no room for white comfort.
