Becoming and Fostering Allies and Accomplices Through Authentic Relationships: Choosing Justice Over Comfort

Abstract

This reflective case study explores the ongoing process of developing and fostering allies and accomplices across privilege, considering how individual and systemic levels interact within interpersonal relationships. Using our longstanding relationships, we highlight key conceptual, relational, and emotional processes and strategies involved in ally and accomplice development. We consider the essential roles of self-reflection, cultural humility, action, and re-engagement after disconnections; and explore the rewards of building authentic relationships across difference, including the ability to work across difference to contribute to dismantling systems of oppression.Those of us who know the joy of being with folks from all walks of life, from all races, who are fundamentally anti-racist in their habits of being, need to give public testimony. We need to share not only what we have experienced but the conditions of change that made such an experience possible. (Hooks, 1995, p. 271

A Systematic Review of Student Disability and Race Representation in Universal School-Based Social and Emotional Learning Interventions for Elementary School Students

“…In the present review, student race is defined as a social construct without biological meaning: a classification system defined by physical differences between people and often used for the purpose of maintaining a power hierarchy among groups to perpetuate systems of privilege, most specifically between people of color and those who are white (Lanham & Liu, 2019; Smedley & Smedley, 2005). In contrast, student ethnicity is defined as a socially constructed characterization of people predicated on having a shared culture related to common ancestry and shared history (Suyemoto et al, 2020). Ethnic groups and ethnicity are not fixed, bounded categories; they are malleable, open to change, and usually self-defined (Barth, 1998).…”

“…Ethnic groups and ethnicity are not fixed, bounded categories; they are malleable, open to change, and usually self-defined (Barth, 1998). The meanings of race and ethnicity as social constructions are built and sustained at a multitude of ecological levels and are relevant to lived experience in ways that have consequential psychological, interpersonal, and material impact for individuals, groups, and communities (Suyemoto et al, 2020). We examine race and ethnicity as a combined construct in the present research study as a result of the precedence for how race and ethnicity are presented in education research (Codiroli McMaster et al, 2018; Dixon et al, 2021).…”

What does it mean to “go beyond race”?

“…Furthermore, being "postracial" often involves proxying race to a supposedly colorblind term such as ethnicity, nationality or country of origins. However, this too serves as avoidance to addressing the power basis of race (Suyemoto et al, 2020b). The uncomfortableness to speak in terms of race and preference to use terms as nationality, ethnicity, culture, and immigration status is mirroring what DiAngelo calls "White fragility" (2018) and Wekker calls "White innocence" (2016).…”

We Need Accomplices, Not Allies in the Fight for an Equitable Geoscience

“…The concept of an accomplice to racial justice has risen as an alternative framework in response to this critique of allyship (Gomberg‐Muñoz, 2018; Indigineous Action, 2014; Powell & Kelly, 2017; Squire, 2019; Suyemoto et al., 2020). An accomplice, in a legal sense, is one who is complicit in the activity of a crime.…”