E39: Allyship Needs Less Lip Service and More Action

<LYRICS>You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me safe and sound. And when I fall, you tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down with an illusion, like a sparrow with broken wings, but now I shine with your reflection on me.</LYRICS> Hi everyone, welcome to Inclusion Unscripted.

If it's Friday at 2 o'clock, you know that you're tuned in to Inclusion Unscripted. We want to ask a bold question today: who are our allies? Who are the people who we can call our allies? And if you're an ally, Are you giving lip service to allyship? See, what I know is allyship is more than the word diversity. Allyship is more than saying, "I'm an ally for diverse people." Allyship is the actions that you take as you empower me, your ally. The challenge for people of color is we can't often figure out who our allies really are. Who are you, Mr. or Miss Ally? And should I trust you to be my ally? But here's the big question: about allyship. When I'm not in the room, when I'm not standing there, when you're not face to face with me, are you still my ally? Does your allyship wane and move away when I'm no longer in the room and you don't have to confront me or confront my presence? That's the question today. So thank you for joining us on Inclusion Unscripted. My name is Margaret Spence and I am the host of this show every Friday at 2 PM live on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. The question around allyship, this Black History Month 2023 is simply this: allies need a little bit less lip service and a little bit more action.

And how did I come to this conclusion?

This, um, this last week has been a reflection, so I want to share a little journey with all of you um, to this subject and this topic. Um, it's a little painful, honestly, uh, this journey, right? So this week I had the absolute— last week actually, and earlier this week I had the absolute honor on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of this week to spend time in Charleston, South Carolina Empowering the next generation of insurance leaders. I had an amazing time meeting our next generation of leaders, and I couldn't help but ask myself, how many of those young next generation leaders are going to truly have an ally in their organization that's going to empower them. And then after my amazing keynote speech and my empowerment of the group and my saying to them, you are what's possible for us, for the next generation, you are who we need in the room as the next generation I took a walk with a group of other folks through the city of Charleston. To tell you that I've never wanted to go to Charleston is an understatement. Never wanted to go to Charleston. It was never a city that was on my places to go. I think of all the places in the United States that I would have wanted to walk, Charleston was not the place that I wanted to walk. To me, the city was painful. I had never been there, but I could imagine that it was painful. I could imagine that the cobblestone streets would be lined with the memory of my ancestors. And so when I got asked to go to Charleston, I struggled, um, with that city. And I agreed to go because I felt that the message I needed to give was more important than the overpowering I felt the city would have for me. So I went and I delivered the speech, and then I went to walk in Charleston. And as I walked in Charleston, I walked through a city that for me meant the erasure of my history. It meant the erasure of my history. It meant a city that took an eraser to my history as a person of color. It didn't matter where the slave ship landed that had my family on it, right, because we don't know if part of the family came to Charleston and part ended up in Jamaica. We don't know this, so some of us could be smug and say, you know, I'm from Jamaica, I had a different experience.

No, you didn't.

You didn't have a different experience. You had the same experience. You were snatched out of Africa, brought to the New World, and freaking enslaved and worked to build this modern empire. But I think what got to me even more And when I reflected and I came back and I called one of my best friends, and she happened to be Jewish, and I said to her, would we have allowed Auschwitz to be gentrified? Would we have allowed the concentration camps to be gentrified and to people— for people to walk through that area, given the genocide that occurred there, would we have allowed them to walk through that place as if nothing happened? Or would we be honoring the history and even the pain of what occurred there? Or would we have our pedigree dogs and be walking through the town like nothing happened. And then as we walked through this town that is laden with Black blood, a wonderful little white woman came up to us with her dog and asked us if we were lost.

Ha ha!

The irony of this woman asking us if we were lost.

In a modern day, when everyone that was walking through that city had our phones out, had the GPS talking to us, this woman had the audacity to ask us if we were lost. I struggled not to really answer her the way I wanted to answer her, which was, damn it, we've been lost our whole freaking life because of your ancestors.

That's what I wanted to say to her. And this is a hard show, honestly.

Today's show is a hard show.

But I decided from that painful encounter—

and the group of us, um, walked past monuments to slavery.

And I learned something that I didn't know.

This is what I learned: that Charleston empowered the internal American slave trade.

I didn't know that.

I don't know why in my mind I thought the internal slave trade was a little bit different. But when I get to Charleston, I realize that the internal slave trade was birthed in Charleston. And we walk the streets and we look at the bricks and we can see the fingerprints and the memories, and the city is heavy and the city is painful. And for a person of color, the city was overpowering my emotion.

It was overpowering my emotion.

But the woman asking me if I was lost, right, when I had a GPS going, make a right, make a left, that I think took me to this subject we're talking about today.

The fact that people of color really don't have allies. We really don't.

We have folks who will advance our— us, who will champion us, who will do all these things, but our allies don't remain silent in our pain.

Our allies don't try to justify our pain. So I came back to sunny Florida, ah, and then I breathed, and I came back to sunny Florida, and I again asked myself, who are our allies? Who are the people who are our allies?

Who are the people who are willing to not just have lip service on diversity and inclusion, but the people who are really willing to get in, get their hands in the meat, and make the sausage anew. Not make the same sausage we've been making, but make a whole new set of sausage that looks differently.

Who are those people? And how do we show up as allies, not only for ourselves, but as allies for us as people of color? See, I often think that people are so blinded in our— in discounting our feelings that they don't know how to be our allies. They, they don't know how.

They have no idea how to effectively be an ally for a person of color.

So I came back and I had a spirited discussion with my consulting partner, and he said to me, Margaret, you need to not feel that way. You should put yourself in other people's shoes. And I went berserk and I said, if I feel that you're not my ally, I cannot put myself in your shoes to make myself contort to the fact that you're not my ally. I can't do that. I cannot do that.

So let's break down allyship today for what it is. Let me break it down for everybody, and I'm gonna make this simple so nobody could say, oh, I don't know what Margaret's talking about.

We're gonna make allyship super simple. It's not going to be the textbook that people have written to make allyship seem like it's something else. It's not going to be that textbook that people have written.

It's not going to be these canned training programs that people talk about allyship and say, oh, you should be an ally, and this is what allyship looks like, and you should go read some books and figure it out.

That's not what this is today. I am talking to my people today. My people of color, this is who I'm talking to, y'all. As I said to the group Monday, I'm talking to us because it's imperative that we are able to identify our allies on face value and we are able to see people on face value, evaluate them on face value and set the expectation so our hearts aren't broken when the allies that we think are our allies break our hearts.

You know what I love when we are working with organizations? I love to be an observer of people and their body language and how they— how comfortable or uncomfortable they are when a topic gets discussed. What I know for a fact is that allyship requires humanity.

Allyship requires humanity. What I didn't see in Charleston, South Carolina is humanity.

I didn't see humanity in Charleston.

Maybe there are people there who are genuinely feeling that this is a sacred place, that the pain inflicted in that city makes it a sacred place that should be honored. But what I saw instead were a bunch of people who pretended like the city's history didn't exist. And they could gentrify the city, they could build high-rises next to the slave market, that they could—

next to the mercantile, they could build a new high-rise with ocean view and forget that the steps from the ocean to the building where you sold us doesn't exist anymore, it's just blended in.

The challenge with allyship is you have the opportunity to stand out as an ally or you have the opportunity to blend in as an ally. 90% of people who claim to be allies for Black people blend in. You don't want to stand out because standing out ruffles the position that you're sitting in. But see, allyship is humanity. You have to see me first as a human who has a need and a want and a desire But if you get to dehumanize me, you get to continue to inflict pain upon me, because as a human I don't feel. As a Black human, I don't feel. I don't have a heart. I don't feel.

I don't feel anything.

So today's program is a hard one because we can't keep doing Black History the way that we've been doing it, where we celebrate Black history. We need organizations to honor Black history. I'm tired of organizations picking up the phone and calling me in February to put on a Black history program, and then I don't hear from them again for the next 11 months. And when they call the next time, I say, what progress have you made in your DE&I program? And they say, well, we're back doing another Black History program, because you want to appease us, but you don't want to honor us and honor our being, our humanity. So instead of honoring our humanity, you do another kabuki dance around our humanity. You put on the show for Black History, and then the rest of the year, the next 11 months, you pretend like we don't exist. But you get to come back in February and say we're having a Black History celebration. So for 28 days, you're all pro-Black History.

Don't talk to me the rest of the year. About Black history because I gave y'all February.

I gave you February. So what else do you want, people? It's like the woman asking me in a town that robbed my ancestors of their humanity, asking me if I am lost. Asking me if I'm lost in the city that robbed my, my ancestors through genocide. An abuse if I'm lost? How dare you ask me if I'm lost? My whole ancestry is lost because of your ancestors. And unfortunately for Black people, we're expected not to have that pain and not to say that, not to say it out loud, not to disagree, not to feel any way at all. We're supposed to suppress our pain because it makes some people uncomfortable. By golly. So, so here's the thing. I'm laying the gauntlet down today. Here's a gauntlet. I don't want to be your Black History speaker.

Anybody that feels the need to call Margaret Spence to speak for Black History You're actually asking me to relive my pain.

Go find someone else to talk about Black history because I'm honoring my history.

I'm not celebrating it on a day that's convenient for you.

As I said to the group on Monday, as I stood on the stage in Charleston, South Carolina, and delivered the keynote. The keynote was "What's Your Possible?" My ancestors couldn't have dreamed of their possible. They couldn't have dreamed of their possible. And I am their wildest dreams around possibility. I'm their wildest dream because I'm standing on a stage helping everyone Black, white, purple, green, orange, yellow. I don't care who you were in that audience. I'm here to help you see beyond the positions you're in right now. I get to see your humanity. I get to see your possibilities. The challenge with allies is they don't see our humanity and they cannot see our possibility. We keep expecting them to see what's possible for us, and they cannot see what's possible for us because they're not willing to be uncomfortable with our humanity. They want to be comfortable with us, but not comfortable enough with our humanity. So here's the thing, because this, as I said, This is Black History Month, so I get the platform. Anybody who doesn't like the messaging, feel free, disconnect, turn off, do whatever. Allyship is not an add-on to who you are. It is who you are. You're either an ally for me or you're not. I don't get to do fake allyship, and I don't want fake allies. My humanity requires allyship. See, here's what I know as a Black person, as a Black woman: everyone is an ally for someone Let me say that again. Everyone is an ally for someone. What I am asking you to do as a non-diverse person is to embrace being an ally for us.

See, because you can be an ally for whoever you want to be an ally for.

But you cannot be an ally for us effectively. So let me tell you the 5 forms of inclusion that shows up in the workplace, because as people of color, we need to understand, fully understand what we are in, in order to evaluate the folks who want to be our allies. There are 5 types of people in this DNI realm.

This is research that I have been doing for years, and I listen to the talk, and as I listen to people, I can drop them into one of these 5 categories. The first category are people who are detractors, people who do not want my humanity to be recognized.

They're detractors from diversity, from inclusion, from equity, from equality, from my belonging, from my ability to thrive. They are detractors to that process. And detractors show up pretty, pretty in a cute way. Detractors show up as if they want diversity and inclusion, but they actively do everything in their power to sabotage it. They do everything in their power to roll it back. So they show up and they say, yes, I want that diversity and inclusion program. I want to have more Black people and brown people and Hispanic people and Asian people on my team. But when they get presented with a slate of candidates, they pick the same ones they've always picked before. And then they say, well, I didn't find that qualified candidate. I, I, I looked around, I, I dusted off that person's resume, and I tried my best to make sure that they could be qualified, but somehow they just don't meet the criteria. And what we used to do is call that culture fit. The person doesn't fit our culture. But you don't even have a culture that you can describe, but you use that as a thing, right? Then there are people in your organizations, in your communities, who want the status quo. Who want nothing to change.

They feel that diversity and inclusion is a thing, a phase. It's gonna go away.

Are we still talking about that thing? Wait, there's enough— I looked around this building, there's a lot of Black people here. There's a lot of them here.

There's tons of us.

What, what, what? I see them, I see them all over. What are we— what are we asking for? There's Black people here, even though it's only one, but there's Black people here. There's a guy over there that's half Black, or, oh, my neighbor is Black, or I have a Black friend, right? So they want the status quo. So we have status quo people who want the status quo, and then we have people who are persuadable. Who, if we talk to them on the right day, they shake their head and they say, yep, I want diversity and inclusion, I want more Black people in our organization, I want to support that policy, I want all of that. And then you leave and they go talk to the status quo people, they have a whole discussion with the status quo people, and the status quo people say, no, you don't, you don't want this because this is what's going to happen to you if you want this. So, so far I'm on 3 types of people in the organization. Let me say them again: detractors, who will actively work against diversity and inclusion. They will undermine it at every cost. They will drown it in the bathtub because that is their goal.

We got a bunch of that going on here in Florida who want to drown diversity in the bathtub, and we got a lot of diverse people who are okay with them drowning the diversity program in the, in the bathtub. Because we're afraid to speak up too, because we don't know how to be allies for each other, for ourselves, for our own cause. Then there are the status quo people who want the status to stay the way it is.

They do not want to see any change happen, but they show up as allies. There are persuadables who will shake their head and say, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, I agree, diversity inclusion is important. They're going to give you the lip service on diversity and inclusion, and we're going to spend all of our time trying to convince these humans that our humanity is valuable. And then there are the true believers, the people who truly believe in diversity and inclusion until we ask them to do something that is hard. And then those true believers reverse to being either detractors, status quo, or persuadables. See, these are the people who take on the role of diversity and inclusion. These are the, the people who show up and say, I want to be your D&I leader, I want to be the D&I person. Here's something I want you all to know, because I posted this on my LinkedIn, which was a post from, um, Tara Jane Frank.

Um, she posted it and I reposted it. Uh, 80% of the diversity and inclusion jobs that are being given out right now, where people are occupying the diversity inclusion role, the people who are occupying that role are white women, not Black women. So there's a misconception that Black people have taken over the diversity and inclusion role, and because we've taken over the diversity and inclusion role that everything's going to be okay.

And there's some kumbaya going on, and we're singing Happy Land, and we're singing Oh Happy Day because everything's great because we are now the diversity inclusion leader. The reality is the majority of the diversity and inclusion leaders are not people of color because organizations still think that if they say diversity and woman in the same breath that they are diverse. I'm gonna say that again. Organizations still feel that if they say diversity and woman in the same breath that they are diverse, and it doesn't quite work that way because it's really easy to segregate the woman category and miss an opportunity to empower all women in an organization. So our true believers who show up as our allies have all the trappings of believing in diversity and inclusion. They believe— you could tell, you could see them they have all the tears, they will cry, they will say, oh my God, I truly believe in diversity and inclusion, I want to make a difference. They are our true believers. But the reality for true believers is they only believe for themselves. They don't really believe for the rest of us. See, that's the truth about the true believer category. And then we have the partners, the people who use their voice in the arena, the people who are steadfast, who are going to walk the walk with us, who are going to say, yes, we've taken 5 steps back, yes, we have a human being who who wants to eliminate diversity and inclusion education. We have a person who doesn't want to talk about diversity inclusion at all in an entire state that is probably 50% diverse, right? And so our partners are willing to go out on a limb with us. They're willing to stand in the room where we're not in and give voice to our humanity. But many of you are feeling, because you've not truly been explained who allies are and the categories they can occupy, you're believing that your detractors are your allies. See, detractors smile in your face and stab you in the back. And then they— when they stab you in the back, they ask us to pull the knife out. That's who detractors are from the diversity and inclusion process, and who they are when they show up as our allies. See, we have to know who the people are in our organizations and who show up in our circles and the categories they're in. See, a lot of people who are detractors join the diversity and inclusion groups. They'll join the ERG, they'll show up as an ally, they'll join diversity committees and councils as an ally. But the reality is they're there to hear what's going on so they can plot and plan a way to make it not happen. But we are still so committed as Black people to helping folks change that we do not effectively see these allies for who they are. We don't see them. We think because they show up in the room and they raise their hand and they say, "I got your back, Margaret," that they really have our back. That they're not plunging the knife into our back, twisting it around, and pulling it out. And then when they show us who they are, you know, though, you know the adage, we need to believe them the first time, not the second, not the third, not the tenth time. We need to believe them the first time. See, Allyship is not an add-on to who you are. Allyship is who you are. Humanity requires allyship. Everyone is an ally for someone. The question is, are you an effective ally for me, for my people? And I am tired of having to put the ask in the back burner. I am tired of—

as my colleague said to me this week, my colleague said to me this week, Margaret, you need to learn to put yourself in other people's shoes more. No, I don't.

That's what I said to him. I said, no, I don't.

I don't need to learn to put myself in other people's shoes.

I've had to put myself in other people's shoes, and I've had to wear the shoe that's 3 or 4 or 5 sizes too small in order to fit in and in order to not make my humanity the subject. I've had to wear the shoes that are super tight.

My grandmother used to say, you know, see me and live with me is two different things.

Right?

We have to understand who our allies are, and we have to ask our allies to do more. We have to ask them to do more. I firmly believe that allyship is an action verb. Let me say that again: allyship is an action verb. Allyship is not a process, it is an action. If you are an ally, you take an action. You take an action to support the people who are voiceless in your organization. That's what you do. The question Do you respect my humanity enough to become my ally? That is the question.

Do you respect my humanity enough to become my ally?

Allyship is built on mutual respect. If you cannot respect me, then you cannot be my ally. How do you demonstrate allyship? What does this look like? It's self-awareness first.

Self-awareness that if you think you are not fully present in the allyship process, that you check your own self-awareness of how you're showing up for me.

Allyship builds trust.

I should be able to trust you, not be worried whether you're plunging the knife in my back and then asking me to pull it out.

A true ally is going to sit with me, understand my pain, without questioning my pain, without asking me to contort myself to see it in some other way. I should not have to contort my mind to see something differently than I see it. So here's the thing, as a person of color, all day long I deal with microaggressive racism all day, every day. There's not a day that it doesn't happen. There are days when I choose not to deal with it, and there are other days when I choose to deal with it, and I choose to verbalize it, and I choose to say it, and I choose to call it out, and I choose to bring it onto this platform to air it, which is what I'm doing today. As an ally, you need to be curious. You need to be curious to understand the impact of what has happened to someone else. You need to be able to communicate beyond your needs to the broader needs of everyone, including people of color.

Including men and women of color.

You have to be—

to be an effective ally, you have to adopt a mindset that enables you to develop and move even when you think you want to do the status quo, that you say, let me check myself here, maybe I should be more of a partner because the lived experience of this person is challenging me to show up differently. Allies have to listen attentively to what we share as people of color.

Don't assume you know, don't assume that you've walked in my shoe, don't assume that you understand, don't assume anything about me because you know nothing about me. You know what I'm willing to share, but you don't know everything about me.

No one knows everything about anyone.

We have to inquire and ask thought-provoking questions about our own allyship, about the actions we want to take. We have to be willing to have open discussions that sometimes aren't comfortable as allies. We have to delegate, we have to delegate with clear guidance so that we don't say, I am putting the burden onto a person of color to help me see what I don't see.

We have to not shift the burden to me as a person of color to help you be a better ally. You've got to figure out what is the action that I need to take as an ally, because again, allyship is an action verb. It's an action verb.

It requires an action.

Allyship is not lip service where you say, "I believe and I want to be an ally." Save it on this Black History Month 2023. I want the action verb that you're willing to do as an ally. I want to see the actions. That you are willing to take as an ally.

That's what I want.

I want to see your action verb. I want you to recognize me. I want you to empower me. I want you to support me. I want you to protect me. I want you to elevate me.

I want you to communicate for me on my behalf in a room that I'm not in.

I want you to trust me. I want you to respect me. And if you can do all of that, then you can be an effective ally.

If you can do all of that, then you can be an effective ally.

I do not want allies anymore who want to use me as a person of color, um, to make you feel better. I don't want you to be my friend if being my friend doesn't support me and my fellow humanity in the same way. I want the action verb of allyship, the action verb of allyship, to come forward. So what I ask of you as we close our show today is this: if you want to be a true ally, figure out the action that you want to take. Figure out how you will see my humanity differently. I have the same needs and wants as any other person in this world. I want to live, I want to live in harmony, I want to be respected, I want to grow in my career, I want to move forward.

I want all the things that you want. My humanity is not different.

My humanity is the same. What is different is how you see my humanity.

What is different is how you see my humanity.

What is intensely different is how you see my humanity. So I challenge all of you to make allyship an action, not a word, not lip service, but an action. Tell me the action you're going to take today and for the next days and weeks to come and years to come that's going to advance my humanity. And then, and only then, can I say I have an ally. Not before then. And I'm not willing anymore to give people a pass on allyship, because the allyship pass that we keep writing to folks, this hall pass— oh, you'll be a better ally eventually— no, you'll never be a better ally unless I challenge you to be a better ally. So I'm challenging all of you to be better allies.

Show up better for us. Show up better.

Show up better for us. That's what we're asking you. See my humanity and show up better for me. Use your voice, but don't just talk. Provide. And build with an action. That's what it takes to be an ally.

So as I said at the beginning, this was going to be a little bit of a tough show.

For all of you who join us every Friday at 2 PM, thank you for joining. You can go to inclusionlearninglab.com and sign up for our events. We have, coming up this Wednesday, we have Third Wednesday, which is an open forum for DE&I leaders. It's where we offer a free support system for those of you doing the work of DE&I. Join the Inclusion Learning Lab if you want help with your organization, if you want help with your diversity and inclusion process, join the Inclusion Learning Lab. I invite all of you to come back for more next Friday at 2 PM. And I appreciate you for showing up today. Thank you, Aaron. I see you too, Aaron. Thank you so much for showing up for me today. And thank you.

So it's the end of our show. It went by fast.

Have a wonderful weekend. I'll see you all next week. Take care.

You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me safe and sound. And when I fall, you tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down with an illusion, like a sparrow with broken wings. But now I shine with your reflection on me.

Take care everyone, have a great weekend, happy Super Bowl-ing, and onward with Black History Month 2023. Take care.