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Wanna Be a Good Ally? It Has Nothing And Everything To Do With You
Allies have had some bad press. More than five years ago, Black Girl Dangerous Mia McKenzie wrote that she was over the term ally, ‘the constant cookie-seeking of people who just can’t do the right thing unless they are sure they’re gonna get some kind of credit for it.’
I saw glimpses of cookie-seeking among a few of my university leadership students, who were mostly white, during their multi-semester service-learning projects. But most were happy to invest two or three times the number of hours for the relative crumbs of credit hours they received.
The bigger cookie-seeking piece was more evident on social media. Something I’d consider optics, given the service-learning teams who stretched themselves the least tended to post the most. McKenzie and Mychal Denzel Smith (among others) describe this kind of behavior as making sure everyone knows they are an ally to a movement, whether they’re actually doing anything required of them or not.
More often than not, they’re just seeking credit for being a good person…It becomes self-congratulatory, centers their experience at the expense of the marginalized, and, as McKenzie points out, reinforces oppressive behaviors that their “ally” work is supposed to be ending. — Mychal Denzel Smith
