In our first dialogue of 2016, WNC will be discussing the complex dynamics of Ally Theater, as described by Black Girl Dangerous bloggers Princess Harmony Rodriguez and Mia McKenzie, asking when do our attempts at allyship become on display in public forums, and how does this impact the nature of our allyship?

For inspiration and an exploration of the concepts of Ally Theater, check out Princess Harmony Rodriguez’s Caitlin Jenner, Social Media, and Violent Solidarity as well as Mia McKenzie’s How to Tell the Difference Between Real Solidarity and Ally Theater.

Dialogue Notes:

• emotional depth
• being critical of other people engaging in ally theater, policing myself
• where are my edges?  where do I feel safe that I don’t do that?
• doing organizing and political work for relationships, but also noticing the currency of social capital
• teaching as performance
• actions – showed up to one or two, taking pictures, posting them – on what level am I showing up to be seen and to get the cookies, to know that I am in the movement
• alternatively, on what level is it helpful that I am showing up and broadcasting it
• how do you know when you are doing it for the cookies?
• how do I show up as a Jew in spaces where there aren’t Jews in Israel, where voices are silenced and lives are destroyed?
• how to be a real, authentic ally?
• research – constantly trying to figure out how to engage and offer something worthwhile without losing sight and claiming a story that isn’t my own
• figure out what my role is, where am I being theatrical
• re-traumatizing to share traumatic things on social media
• relational aspect – on social media you are sharing with strangers, versus in life you are engaging with people you know
• relationship to self worth – gendered aspect
• trying to absolve shame of whiteness and white privilege through acts of solidarity
• cookie part of it is about addressing that shame
• not as self-conscious before I was politicized around race and privilege
• performing an anti-racism identity even to prove to myself
• what does it mean to form a new white identity?
• whiteness is a sickness that you want to reject, what does it mean to form an identity beyond that? what does it mean to do that collectively?
• can see ally theater very clearly in my past, especially in the times of trying to form identity of politicized white anti-racist identity
• I don’t even want a white anti-racist identity, I want a holistic identity, which might look some like rejecting “allyship” identity
• not proud of this — feeling of legitimacy for notches on my bed-post for intimacy with non-white folks
• being okay in an oppressor’s body, because that’s my lot in life – can we accept this?
• how much harder would it be to be a white, straight man who is conscious of the world – triple whammy
• as a woman, one part of my body/identity not being privileged
• want men to be involved in dismantling patriarchy, but not helpful when men show up and replicate patriarchy – same concerns with whiteness: how can we show up without replicating white supremacy?
• just assume I am always enacting white supremacy – is there a difference between being critically conscious and ripping your self worth to shreds
• question the danger of self-deprecation
• can be weirdly self congratulatory if you are extremely self deprecating – how is this serving anyone?
• proving our self worth by destroying it
• socialization since we were kids – so conditioned to seek approval so obviously we are going to do this in our movements and in our relationships
• value we place on standing out, making your mark, being seen, is a very individualistic, western, American perspective
• ally theater is about social capital
• how are our movements set up to perpetuate the strive for social capital?
• we create celebrities within our counter-countercultural movements
• in direct action spaces, if we are just showing up as white bodies, what is the effect of that?  what does this do?  is it important?
• bay area organizing community is a competitive social market
• don’t want to be performative or be performing or doing it for theatrical aspect, yet at the same time if you want a seat at the tactical table you do have to be seen
• the movement right now is performative
• the way we do actions doesn’t feel like a sacrifice in the same way the lunch counter actions felt
• participating in direct action feels like a win-win: the costs are so minimal right now
• do we have to be paying a great cost for justice?
• direct actions exist in a performative space – they are in many ways performances
• ally theater – throw down for the movement, but not willing to live in a world without white supremacy
• ally theater – I’m going to show up for this action, but actually I like calling the cops, or I like getting out of a ticket when I get pulled over
• research – trying to figure out how to be most effective and use the resources at my disposal, is there a way to use academic research?
• how much time do we spend in our echo-chambers?  whether is academia or direct action circles
• we do so much organizing within our circles, but if only the people involved in an action understand the action logic but 10,000 people stuck in traffic are just peeved
• does how much it matters to the movement impact whether or not it is ally theater?
• spaces of not-knowing
• direct action has been privileged as the “real work” but what about cultural work, performance, art, etc.
• in a classroom – you are authority, but you are trying to raise young people to live in a world where white people are not the authority
• feel similarly about social work
• how do I radicalize my students or my colleagues without re-traumatizing them?
• you haven’t earned the ability to talk about that
• desire to have my politicized identity recognized where it is otherwise invisible – bring up race in a way that can harm others
• throwing someone under the bus is performative and traumatizing to our movement, and it is actually the easier thing to do
• white bodies and how they change an environment or interaction
• if you are in a situation where you feel like your whiteness is inherently toxic, anything you do feels like performance.  either a performance to not be seen, or a performance to be seen as anything other than what you are.
• more aware of the violence solidarity, and trying to post more about the resilience of our communities rather than
• yikyak
• not want to engage in social media conversations that don’t feel strategic, yet at the same time one of the roles of “white allies” is to intervene in any instance of white supremacy
• part of our liberation as white people is believing that our whiteness is not toxic – while on an intellectual level I totally agree with this, my felt experience is not of this
• act of owning white privilege reifies whiteness, but the act of denying white privilege also reifies whiteness – feels like a stuck place
• what does it mean to own and move in the way that you acknowledge that you have white privilege in a system of white supremacy, but that your liberation is really tied to not identifying as white, its about getting to all of those things underneath that colonization
• we need new language, that by no means disassociates from our history but there should be another world that isn’t white
• Ta-nehisi Coates – whiteness doesn’t really exist, its not a real thing but it has only been an identity about white supremacy
• what is a word, culture, identity that could go beyond – can we please have some new language?  not just white anti-racist
• “I own my white privilege but I am not white”
• something aspirational, something to move towards, not constantly away from
• going backwards doesn’t feel like a solution; the amount of backwards you have to go back to get beyond colonialism and empire is unreasonable
• feels hard to talk about post-colonial white identity while simultaneously struggling to get the majority to even believe that white supremacy exists
• reclaiming Celtic witchcraft
• searching for reclamation and belonging, some sort of self knowledge – big swaths of New England have just latched on to Celtic culture
• missing art, spirituality, meaning, ritual – this is what is at root of much of reclamation
• culture is an evolutionary process at a societal level, something feels fundamentally wrong about saying we want to start from scratch, that logic has bred harmful behaviors
• evolution of collective wisdom
• it gets forgotten that culture evolves, in the search for authenticity things get frozen – this is what it means to authentically be of a certain culture
• stickiness of culture; coming up with words, language, vision for what it could be in the future; ways that we can claim culture that is liberatory
• performativity, authenticity, intimacy in relationships with people of color
• lightness of curiosity