When Claudia Rankine, a Black poet and playwright, was asked by a white man, after a reading from Citizen: An American Lyric (Rankine’s 2014 anthology about the collective effects of racism in our society) ‘What can I do for you? How can I help you?’ she replied ‘I think the question you should be asking is what you can do for you.’ The man said, ‘If that is how you answer questions, then no one will ask you anything.’
The originating impulse for Rankine’s play, The White Card, a distillation of racial divisions and an exploration of the invisibility of whiteness, came from this man’s question. (Words above from Rankin’s article in the Soho Theatre’s programme for a recent production of The White Card.)
What Rankine said here (and, more recently, here and here) is that the problem with the man’s question is that it assumed that she was the one with a problem:
As if [when] a white person is not in the room, I can experience racism by myself.
For white people the question is not: How can we white people help Black people? It’s not: What can we white people do for Black people? The question is: What can we white people do to unearth and dismantle our own racism?
In her wise, clear, compassionate and comprehensive guide to white allyship, The Good Ally, Nova Reid shows us white people how we need to unlearn our racism. At the beginning of The Good Ally she sets out the four key stages to keep in our minds and our hearts as we aspire to become white allies. As we disrupt and dismantle our own racism we need to Listen. To Unlearn. To Re-Learn. And then, and only then, to take Responsive Action. And these stages will interconnect and recur throughout our antiracism work (which is, clearly, lifelong work).
But, as soon as The Good Ally arrived, I leapt ahead to Chapter 11: Brokering Change, Action and Advocacy. I wanted to find out what I could do, just like the man who asked Claudia Rankine what he could do. But I hadn’t begun to understand my own racism and the impact it has on Black people. Thankfully, Nova was lightyears ahead of me. In the second sentence of Chapter 11 she writes:
If you’ve found your way here without reading the rest of the book, I see you. Please don’t undermine antiracism work or the labor it has taken to create this resource by trying to skip ahead. And please don’t underestimate the unintentional harm you will continue to inflict on others by not doing this work properly.
I went straight back to the beginning and began to read. And now I know The Good Ally will remain my guide to white allyship for the rest of my life. I’ll refer to it again and again and again. Its wise words will ring in my head and help me when I, inevitably, get it wrong. But now I’ve seen my own racism I can’t unsee it. Now I know that even though I’m not an overt, screaming-abuse racist, still I’m racist, because I was born with white skin, because I learned racism as a white child, because I have all the privileges that go with living inside white skin. (I read The Good Ally with a zoom group, and listening to other white people’s learnings and fears, recognitions and intentions enormously deepened the experience, helped us collectively take responsbility for our racism and we will remain accountable to each other for our responsive actions.)
There’s nothing in the least justified or natural or scientific or true or right about racism and anti-Blackness: they’re inventions of white people to maintain power, white supremacy. But these inventions, these lies, took hold and, over the centuries, racist attitudes and anti-Black behaviours have saturated the psyches of white people. Nova Reid’s book gives us white people much to listen to as we dismantle our racism. Much to question ourselves about and to unlearn. Much to discover and to re-learn and, at the end, many possible ways of and prompts for taking responsive action.
Resmaa Menakem says we live in a racial pigmentocracy. We do. But why on this good earth should the color of a person’s skin give or refuse access to good housing, healthcare, education, financial security, work, mental welfare, emotional welfare … every single aspect of human life? Clearly it should not, and never should have. The Good Ally gracefully shows us white people just how urgent it is to unlearn our racism so everyone has a chance of living in an equitable society, side by side.
