Freeing Ourselves through Allyship

a sermon given on April 2, 2017 at Church of the Savior, Cedar Park, TX

I direct a non-profit called the Institute for Diversity and Civic Life and we do workshops on what it means to be an ally and how to think about diversity and social justice. So that’s what I want to talk about today.

So what do I mean by ‘allyship’? Allyship is a life-long process of building relationships that one enters into to strive to be an ally. And what’s an ally? An ally is a person of privilege, who uses their advantage or social power to work against oppression or injustice, to be in solidarity with marginalized groups of people, and to work for social change.

In this country, we like to claim that equality-- the inherent equality of all people-- is a cornerstone American value, a value our society is built upon. But historically, our society has been organized around hierarchies that give power and benefits to certain groups over others. These hierarchies are based on membership in social groups, such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age/generation, ability, socioeconomic status (class), religious identity, and citizenship/nationality. The power and privilege given to members of some groups over other creates structural oppression, where an individual’s agency—their capacity for self-determination and power in their own lives-- is limited or constrained by their membership in a disadvantaged or marginalized group.

In our society, certain ways of being—ways that, as individuals, we may have no control over-- are seen as preferable to others. Certain ways of being we see as stronger, smarter, more capable, more civilized, more normal: to be white, to be male, to be cisgendered, to be straight, to be able-bodied. So people who fall into these groups get privileges they did nothing to earn—more access to jobs, education, positions of leadership and authority, and respect.

Now, we might be tempted to say 'hey, a lot of these privileged people have worked hard to earn their good job, their leadership position, their nice house. These things weren’t just handed to them.' And we might say that a lot people who aren’t in these privileged groups have good jobs, leadership positions, and nice houses. But we should know that people who occupy groups that are minorities or marginalized or disadvantaged have to work harder to access the same things that privileged people come to easily. They have to prove themselves in ways that privileged people don’t. And often times, they don’t have access at all—to education, social mobility, social acceptance, or political capital.

These hierarchies organize social institutions and structures, such as government, education, the criminal justice system, the economy and the workplace, where opportunities, privileges, and resources are readily available to members of dominant groups and withheld from members of marginalized groups.

These dynamics of unshared power often go unseen. They are taken for granted as ‘the way things are’ or justified as having some root in biology, such as with race or gender. These dynamics of unshared power especially go unseen for those who are privileged. Privilege often works like blinders. We often don’t see the ways we move with ease through the world. We take the smooth road for granted and we only notice the potholes.

So one of the first steps in allyship is just to come to an awareness of this unshared power, this structural or systemic oppression. And then we have to step back and recognize our own place within dynamics of unshared power. What are some of the often taken-for-granted ways that we move through the world with ease, whereas other people, not part of our social groups, find obstacles and barriers?

Of course, this process of coming to terms with our own privilege can be challenging and risky. We may feel vulnerable and scared. We may have to acknowledge ways that we’ve unwittingly benefitted at the expense of others, ways we’ve ignored the suffering and struggles of others, and ways we’ve hurt others. Maybe we've made a wrong assumption about someone—maybe we didn’t ask someone to join our team, give them a leadership position or an opportunity because of an assumption we made based on their social group. Or perhaps we looked at someone struggling through structural oppression and said that maybe they wouldn’t have had those struggles if they had just worked harder. And it can be painful to realize that we’ve been unknowingly complicit in racism or sexism even when we’ve felt personally committed to the equality of all individuals. If seeing our place in dynamics of power and privilege is a new revelation for us, we may feel helpless and vulnerable when we take off these blinders.

So then, why do this? Why embark upon the path of allyship? Why go through the process of rethinking things that we've taken for granted, which have come so easily? Why take the risk? Because we care about others? Because we’re generous and charitable? Because it’s the right thing to do?

What I want to say to you is that the path to allyship is also a path to liberation—for ourselves and for those struggling through oppression. And if we’re truly committed to a just world, we must seek it through mutual liberation. If we want to see the kin-dom of God on earth-- not the 'kingdom,' not a hierarchical, male-led social arrangement, but the kin-dom, a place of deep connection with all of creation-- then we must seek it through mutual liberation.

There’s a saying once attributed to Lilla Watson, an indigenous Australian activist, who then attributed it to the collective wisdom of aboriginal elders, that really encapsulates this idea of mutual liberation:

‘If you’ve come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you’ve come here because your liberation is bound with mine, then let us work together.’

Sometimes, those of us committed to social justice go about this work with a kind of noblesse oblige-- an intention to help but with the attitude that we’re fortunate ones being generous and charitable to those who need our help. Maybe we lead the charge, take credit for beneficence, make the decisions about what to do and the approach to take. We become the benefactors, the heroes. We don’t partner with those we want to help. We don’t seek to empower, listen or learn from. And we don’t see their suffering as tied to our own.

‘If you’ve come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you’ve come here because your liberation is bound with mine, then let us work together.’

What does this mean? What is this mutual liberation? And conversely, what is this intertwined oppression?

The blinders we wear as members of privileged or dominant groups don’t just keep us from seeing dynamics of unshared power. They keep us from seeing, truly seeing, our fellow humans in all their humanity. Instead of seeing our deep interdependence and interconnectedness in the kin-dom of God, we see difference, division, and separation. Ethicist and liberation theologian Mary Elizabeth Hobgood talks about a ‘moral ambiguity’ that comes with being part of a dominant group which she says leads to ‘impoverished social relations and limited consciousness.’

Living blindly and complicit in a hierarchical, inequitable, and oppressive world requires dehumanization. We accept the status quo by accepting that some people are less valuable, less human than ourselves or other privileged people. We can see a glimpse of this in our media, for example. We all probably remember the terrorist attack in Paris  in November 2015. There was a lot of media coverage and collective outrage. But at the same time, there was also a terrorist attack in Beirut, Lebanon. And it received much less media coverage and attention. Ostensibly, we saw outrage about the deaths of individuals like to us—je suis Paris-- but silence about deaths of people who seem not like us, other. This is a kind of dehumanization—empathizing with and prioritizing some human lives over others.

But the thing with dehumanization is that when you dehumanize another person, you simultaneously dehumanize yourself. You shut off the part of yourself that lets you live in full recognition of our life-giving interdependence. You’re alienated from your own humanity. And you’re alienated from the kin-dom God. To be truly connected to one another in the kin-dom of God, we must be able to relate to one another in ways that are just, life-giving, and mutual.

Even when we’re privileged, oppressive norms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality among others can stifle us, limit our relationships, our connections with one another, and our ways of being in the world. Even when we reap benefits of privilege, we may still find that these oppressive norms force us to live in ways that don’t feel true, authentic, or life-giving.

As Americans, as Texans, we like to talk about how much we value freedom. What does it mean to be free if we're bound by oppressive social structures? True freedom is only attainable if those of us who are privileged take responsibility for our roles in oppression. True freedom can only be realized if we continually work to scrutinize our power-- power we generally did not ask for, power that can only exist for us by taking power away from those who are oppressed. True freedom—liberation—can only be realized when we free ourselves from ways of being that reinforce this unshared power. True freedom can only be found if we learn to be in solidarity with those who are marginalized or oppressed.

Allyship is about the work of redemptive solidarity—to recognize our truly deep interdependence—to find redemption and renewal through overcoming the oppressive structures that allow some of us to benefit at the expense of others, through freeing ourselves from the illusion of our superiority, through freeing ourselves from the oppressive structures that keep us apart.

‘If you’ve come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you’ve come here because your liberation is bound with mine, then let us work together.’

Allyship is about working together in deep, authentic, interdependent relationships, in solidarity. You can’t be an ally in isolation. You have to build relationships with people. And you have to do so with humility and awareness. In order to work together, we have to be able to remove the blinders of our privilege to truly see one another, to hear one another, to know one another. We have to be able to move past these structures of unshared power that keep us apart. And we have to do this work together-- in mutually affirming, mutually empowering, and mutually liberating ways. Because, truly, my liberation is bound with yours. And your liberation is bound with mine.