A few years back I remember coming across the term “Ally” in the realm of anti-racism work, specifically as one that is extended to White people from people in the BIPOC community, but also from the LGBTQ+ community to all people.
It wasn’t long after that I began to read pieces from different people and sources in the BIPOC community who were critical of the term and its meaning. It didn’t take me very long to start to see the shortcomings of the term “Ally”, and why many BIPOC activists championed the term “Accomplice”.
In this post I want to share some of what I learned and my own thoughts on the differences between “Ally” and “Accomplice”, specifically as they centre around the work of anti-racism and decolonization. In particular, I’m interested in a question I’ve heard many white people ask, friends and otherwise, “What can I do to help?”. However, the answer is one that most white people either don’t want to or aren’t ready to hear, because they quickly realize what it entails.
When Israel stepped up it’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza in response to Hamas’s retaliation on October 7, 2023, many of us Arabs in the diaspora vicariously felt some of the pain, the fear, the panic, the horror. Some a lot more than others. For me in particular, as I have mentioned in another post, I felt as if all my fears, insecurities, safety, were ripped out of me and exposed to the whole world. I felt bound, caged, and put on display with the rest of my people for everyone to see. Everything we did and said was now under the surveillance technology of the Western colonies and their people. Many of us panicked and raged as we were forced to watch our Arab people and families annihilated, in the occupied territories of Palestine.
It wasn’t long before I saw my social circle of white friends dwindle. In some cases I lost friends as a result of me cutting ties with them, and others as a result of them cutting ties with me. I felt like they all fell into three different categories: 1-The ones who ran over to me and raged in the face of the Western Colonialist machine, 2-The ones who recognized the atrocity but were careful to stay out of sight from the gaze of it and its surveillance technology , and 3-The ones who looked away and chose to stay completely out of sight. The people in the first category are the only ones that I now care to keep in my circle.
In mine and other BIPOC experience, when it comes to doing anti racist and decolonizing work, most white people prefer actions that don’t disturb their comfort level too much. For example, signing a petition, making a donation, listening to us vent, are all important things, but they stop short of confronting the problems of racism and colonialism head on. Those acts do not jeopardize the privilege of white people, and as such they passively continue to uphold the systemic and institutionalized laws of colonialism and white supremacy.
It’s quite easy to make anonymous donations a couple of times a year or to sign a petition here and there. On the other hand, accepting the responsibility that comes with doing decolonizing work is completely different. Being responsible to actively engage in decolonizing systems of oppression means showing up to protests, taking steps to amplify the voices and messages of marginalized people, educating oneself and their community, investing in resources and projects that raise BIPOC scholars, activists, and businesses, writing to and calling political representatives that are complicit in passing unjust laws that target marginalized populations etc. In short, responsibility means going above and beyond simple acts. Responsibility means becoming an accomplice, and jeopardizing one’s own comfort, privilege, and livelihood to stand against colonialist white supremacist rule.
Once a person accepts the responsibility to aid and abet marginalized and oppressed people then they transition from being an ally to being an accomplice. And accomplices are what we need in order to dismantle systems of oppression. Kelsie Kilawna wrote a great article “We don’t need another ally” talking bout the differences and implications between being an ally and being an accomplice. In her article Kilawna also tells us about the importance of being an accomplice and the responsibility that comes along with it.
Another article written by Rudy, who is a writer at www.indigenousaction.org discusses what they call the Ally Industrial Complex, which brilliantly breaks down the different types of ally groups and how they uphold systems of oppression in very passive aggressive way.
But the transition from ally to accomplice is an incredibly difficult just to make, in my humble and informed opinion. Reading both of those articles, among other literature by BIPOC scholars and activists (Angela Davis, bell hooks, Franz Fanon, Ijeoma Oluo, Edward Said, to name a few) has convinced me that many white people simply don’t have what it takes to take on the responsibility of being an accomplice. Allies are comfortable being just that, and many of them cannot be bother to do the amount of work involved to help them decolonize their own minds, let alone the work to help decolonize systems of oppression. It requires them to give up so much of their comfort and privilege, and that itself it incredibly difficult to do.
As an immigrant and a child of immigrants myself, I, like many BIPOC, have had to work twice as hard (if not more) to gain proximity to Whiteness and the privileges it bestows. Among other things, I’ve had to learning two different languages, the norms, laws, practices of the imperial-colonialist-West, consciously working to get rid of my Arabic accent when I speak French and English. All this and more that we’ve done in order to make sure that we minimize the level of rejection we get from Whiteness (Because Whiteness never truly or fully accepts us, it just rejects us less).
But many white people here in the west were simply born with all these privileges and never having to worry about being rejected by the systems that have been built to first and foremost benefit them. And when you’re born with and have grown up with these privileges it can be very difficult to give them up. And it is precisely in clinging to these privileges and proximity to Whiteness, which are born directly from Western Imperialism and Colonialism, that contributes to upholding the systems of oppression. So it really comes down to people having to choose and decide: Is their comfort and privilege worth the lives of other human beings? They may not see it that way. However, to me, allies have already decided that it is.
Recall when I mentioned the category 1 friends in my social circle? They are mostly BIPOC and a few white friends, who chose to put their privilege, livelihood, reputation and resources on the line, and stand in solidarity against Israel’s atrocities over the Palestinians. Those are my accomplices, because together we lend our voices to trying to dismantle these systems of oppression. We also support each other and share stories about our experiences and challenges we face with friends, family, work colleagues etc. when we speak about Palestine.
As Kilawna mentions in her article, Black communities have been warning us for decades about the harm that allies cause to BIPOC. Silence and indifference, usually two hallmarks of allyship, are both tools of oppression, that primarily harm marginalized and oppressed populations like the People of Palestine, Congo, and Sudan. And as time goes on, the real and active violence of colonialism grows and allyship doesn’t possess the necessary tools to keep it in check because of how passive it is.
Knowing what I know now, I feel it’s fair to say that being an “Accomplice” contains all the positives of aspects of “Allyship”, without any of it’s shortcomings, and also goes beyond it in the fight to decolonize and dismantle systems of oppression.