Allyship is not a fad - how to make a home in your life for antiracist work
Today is Day 5 of a 5-day challenge in partnership with Frederick Joseph, author of The Black Friend: On Being A Better White Person, for the Yahoo Life 5-Day Allyship Pledge.
“Your final challenge is to prepare for a marathon because this isn't a sprint,” Joseph says, explaining how rectifying 400 years of systemic inequities plaguing the Black community will be long and arduous work. “It [won’t] take a day, week or month to undo what our entire country was founded on.”
We cannot begin to gauge how much time it will take to dismantle systems responsible for generations of widespread oppression, he continues.
“It's time for the most important part of all this work,” Joseph says. “Understanding this is just the beginning.”
He says we must accept the changes we are fighting for may not happen during our lifetime.
“That's something that [we] have to be okay with, because every step is important,” Joseph says, encouraging us to stay present while completing this challenge.
Due to this, he explains we cannot put a timestamp on how long it will take to overhaul the “systems that many have been benefiting from for generations.”
“My final challenge to you is to commit to continuing to do the work,” Joseph says. “By that I mean, create an actual home in your life for your allyship.”
Making a “home” for your allyship requires designating a permanent place in your life for antiracism work, he continues.
For example, Joseph suggests setting up a recurring donation to organizations that support Black lives or help dismantle systems of oppression, volunteering with an organization and joining (or starting) an anti-racist book club to continue learning how to be a better ally.
Video Transcript
FREDERICK JOSEPH: Hey everybody. Frederick Joseph here, with our final day of our 5-day challenge on the road to being a better ally.
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During our other four days of challenges, we've learned a lot. How to take inventory of your privilege, how to learn to be uncomfortable, how to be held accountable, and also how to take action with the resources and privileges that we've learned that we have. Your fifth and final challenge is to prepare for a marathon, because this isn't a sprint.
So the reason that you and I are here isn't because a moment happened yesterday or something happened over the summer, we're facing 400 years of systemic inequities and disparities plaguing the black community, and you've decided that you want to help. The reality is that the work is long and difficult. It doesn't take a day. It doesn't take a week. Don't place a time stamp or try to quantify how long it will take for us to have the change in undoing all of this oppression and all these systems that many of you had been benefiting from for generations, even if you didn't realize it until the challenge.
Which is why my final challenge to you today is to commit to continuing to do the work. Create an actual home in your life for your allyship. Because if this isn't a sprint and it is a marathon, then that means that the work should be happening every day, every month, every year.
Set up a recurring donation to the organizations that you found that are dismantling some of the systems that you said you wanted to help dismantle. Set aside time for actually getting out and continuously helping volunteer at an organization. Another example, and this is extremely important, is continuing to learn. Join an anti-racist book club. There's so many texts and opinions and thoughts on how you can be a better ally. And over time, you should receive, consider, and get out and think about as many of them as you can.
So I want to thank you all for taking part in challenges, and I sincerely hope that your work doesn't end here. I want to see every last one of you out there in the marathon with the rest of us, continuing to do the work of creating a more just, equitable, and fair society for all of us. For more resources on allyship, go to the Yahoo Allyship Pledge at yahoo.com backslash allyship.
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