Me and White Supremacy - Day 19: Optical Allyship

Resource: Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad

According to Latham Thomas, optical allyship (aka, performative allyship or ally theater) is “Allyship that only serves at the surface level to platform the ‘ally,’ it makes a statement but doesn’t go beneath the surface and is not aimed at breaking away from the systems of power that oppress.” An optical illusion of allyship is created by people with white privilege seeming to do anti-racism work, but not diving deep into it and instead displaying behaviors like tokenism, white saviorism, white centering, etc. Signs of optical allyship include 1) the intention behind act of allyship being to avoid being called racist or to receive praise or other reward 2) acts of allyship that create the look of diversity and inclusion, but does not create change at deeper levels - allyship is symbolic but not substantive 3) acts of allyship led by people with white privilege who are not listening to, partnering with, or following the leadership of BIPOC they want to help 4) acts of allyship involving no real risk - does not require participant to get out of their comfort zone and 5) people engaged in white fragility when challenged by BIPOC to not perform optical allyship rather than listening and taking guidance.

Optical allyship shows up by:

• Jumping into activism without any real personal self-reflection work on your own racism

• Appearing to be an ally by tokenizing BIPOC

• Reposing antiracism posts and virtue signaling so that everyone knows you’re an ally, but not doing much more work beyond that

• Positioning yourself as ally/activist leader while continuing to talk over, speak for, and and take over spaces of BIPOC

• Distance yourself from your own white supremacy by continuously complaining about how awful other white people are

• Clinging to symbols like safety pins and hashtags over doing the real work

• Bringing activism words and BIPOC images into your brand to make your business look more “woke”

• Only sharing the work of BIPOC who you’ve deemed to be palatable to the white gaze

Optical allyship is about the person with white privilege and is about how it makes them look and feel rather than the BIPOC it is intended to support. It’s a form of white centering. The Guide to Allyship by Amélie Lamont defines key aspects of genuine allyship as: taking on the struggle as your own, standing up even when you feel scared, transferring the benefits of your privilege to those who lack it, and acknowledging that white you too feel pain the conversation is not about you. To differentiate between optical allyship and genuine allyship, Saad explains “While optical allyship centers people with privilege, actual allyship centers those who are marginalized.”

Reflection: How have you practiced optical allyship when it comes to antiracism? Has your motivation to show up in allyship been dependent upon what other people think about you or how you are perceived?

I would say that the most optical allyship I have partaken in was this summer on social media. I don’t know about you, but in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, my social media was swamped with a wave of social justice memes, resources, and virtue signaling (that’s under the assumption that people are posting things without doing actual antiracism work, and that may not be true). I felt compelled and somewhat peer pressured to participate in this sort of optical allyship as it felt like people were keeping tabs on who was posting things about antiracism and who wasn’t (definitely got pulled into the blackout day without researching about it first before participating, which now makes me more critical of trends and finding out where they started before participating). It was definitely overwhelming, which is why I started this blog - I wanted a way to dive deeper into antiracism work while also being able to model a way to do that. I do think this blog started as a form of optical allyship (like the idea of it was partly based on wanting to show the work I was doing), but definitely has become more of a way for me to genuinely reflect on my learning. I also know that even though I post it on social media, not that many people actually read the posts, and it’s not a place where I am trying to increase my site hits.

I do think there is a fine line between optical allyship on social media and using it as a tool for learning/sharing. Before this summer, I wouldn’t have considered using social media to discuss social justice or anything that may be seen as controversial, and this summer I recognized that as a privilege that I could do that. I think sharing these blog posts is sort of walking that line by sharing information with people while giving me a chance to reflect and learn. Right now I feel like I am not taking enough action (besides learning), and I’m not sure if that is me being complacent or more due to the situation during this pandemic (only interacting with my family in person and being in a weird sort of transition period between jobs). I have been part of an Anti-Racist Coalition with some of my friends, and diving deeper into this work with them has been a highlight of doing this work.

I think that before this summer, I was more concerned with how others would perceive me in the anti-racist work that I was doing (which was admittedly pretty surface level), but now I am more concerned with my own personal growth and my impact on BIPOC communities. I’ve seen a lot of growth within myself in the past year, and although I don’t deserve a cookie for it, I think that’s still good to acknowledge for myself.