I recently did a workshop on allyship - the active, consistent, and arduous practice of unlearning and re-evaluating, in which a person in a position of privilege and power seeks to operate in solidarity with a marginalized group - which allowed me to better understand the real impacts of systemic racism, how multiple, repeated discriminatory slights actually affect the oppressed.
And it shook me.
Because, as I tried to internalize what a racialized individual may actually be experiencing when subjected to an environment of discrimination, it struck me that it was really a reverberation of what might be called a “triple threat”, essentially the 3-pronged weight they must shoulder in their day-to-day:
The burden of institutional racism (including the uphill work of trying to function in an environment in which one is essentially handicapped from the start, one in which the odds are stacked against you)
The burden of having to arm oneself against, and/or modify one’s behaviour to address, patterns of privilege (or institutional racism) by others
The burden of working to overperform to prove one’s worth
I’m exhausted just writing this. Honestly, it’s not hard to envisage the psychological, mental and emotional toll this can take on an individual. It’s not hard to see how being subjected to an environment of repeated aggressions could just pummel the hell out of you.
And I cried.
Putting yourself in the shoes of the marginalized is not easy. But we have to do it. To do better. To be better.
The importance of being an ally cannot be overstated.
See also TEDx Talk: "How Studying Privilege Systems Can Strengthen Compassion": Peggy McIntosh
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