Dear ally: “It’s not about you”
Allyship is about leveraging your position and power to claim space for marginalized people.
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“I’ve been doing this a long time, and it’s deeply human stuff,” says Katrina Jones, whose diversity work has included senior roles at Accenture, Vimeo, Twitch, and now, Amazon Devices. “That’s why it’s so challenging.”
For the better part of her career, Jones has dedicated herself to creating and implementing systems designed to address the barriers that exist for people from non-majority cultures in the workplace—the kinds of things that make people feel excluded, overlooked, or simply exhausted from the effort of fending off microaggressions.
She also knows from her own personal experience that feeling like “the other” at work takes a toll.
“One thing that has existed as a divide, and for me that has made me feel disconnected, is that I’ve felt that I could not bring my race, and the experiences [that derive from it] forward,” Jones said, as she helped co-lead a town hall on power at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Next Gen summit in 2018. These insights are part of the diversity “good stuff,” the parts where teams outperform, new markets are discovered, and where the innovation happens. But it’s also how people thrive at work and find peace
When it feels risky to be yourself at work, allies are in a unique position to help. But she says, it’s a hard thing to master.
How to be a better ally is a question that comes up constantly in her work, she says. “I hear it all the time. And it’s typically when something happens, and a person in a majority group bears witness to something and then suddenly and viscerally understand how messed up things are for marginalized people. It hits them hard and it hits them deep.”
The first problem arises when they want a simple answer. “They want logical steps. They want a prescription. They want to be walked from Point A all the way through, but that’s not what this is,” she says. “Allyship is a constant journey of learning, humility and curiosity, and finding the courage to take action to make things better.”
Jones recently wrote a popular Twitter thread that talks about what it means to be a good ally—and why it can be so hard. Today, raceAhead has adapted that thread into a Gif essay, with her permission.
Read on for Jones’s thoughts, in Gif essay form.
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It’s Not About You, Ally
Allyship, especially in service of increasing diversity and making [organizations] more equitable and inclusive, must anchor to humility.
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What I mean by this, is it requires you to put your ego aside. Drop your need to be right, actively suppress your desire or inclination to take up space. Think of yourself as an instrument, and ask to be led by the marginalized, affected community members.
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And if you end up arguing with said community about who should be at the forefront, guess what?
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Wait—that’s not fair! You’re informed, you’re passionate about allyship and said community, and just want to make a difference, right?
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And if people will be more likely to listen to you versus the marginalized group, then you’re just doing your part to help, to get people who otherwise would not engage, to engage?
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Allyship, in practice, often boils down to you leveraging your position and power to claim space for marginalized people. Not proclaiming to speak on behalf of them or solely being a mouthpiece for the issues that impact them.
It’s reminding people who have the lived experience and expertise and centering their voices, their ideas, their solutions. Removing blockers so they can proceed through, but not necessarily putting on a cape and saving Gotham all by yourself.
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My friend Michelle Kim waxed eloquently about allyship here. She starts off with a powerful definition—”Allyship is an active and consistent practice of using power and privilege to achieve equity and inclusion.
”—and breaks it down further from there. I strongly recommend you read her post, make some notes, maybe use it to create a mantra you can recite every day.
Because it takes practice.
— Katrina Jones
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Ellen here, again.
Jones said she has a mantra of her own, which was inspired by a recent sermon from her pastor. “Who do you serve?” he asked. It hit her as the perfect way to explain how she wants to engage with others. “My mantra is, ‘I am serving with humility and vulnerability,'” she says. “It helps me stay curious, open and compassionate, and reminds me that I don’t know how other people are experiencing their lives.”
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
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