Trust and Allyship

I like to preface anything I say around race relations with “I can only speak for myself and my specific experiences.” Yes, Black people have a foundation of dealing with prejudice, racism and everything that comes with it. However, we're still individuals with a certain set of specific experiences that fill in the rest of how we see the world and how we move in it. I took time this weekend with all the activity that happened and looking at what's coming up in the near future. What I realized is that there's a certain vulnerability that comes with being a Black person in America, a Black woman in America, a Black woman in Edmonds/suburbia.

What I have allowed myself to understand and embrace is that allyship (or being an accomplice) comes with a level of trust that Black people extend. This is important because, as a culture, we are taught and have unfortunately experienced over periods of time, that trusting others outside of our community is tricky. Embracing allyship within this movement means that we are opening ourselves up and allowing trust with people that we normally would not. When allyship is broken, trust is broken. This is why it is so important to understand what it means to be an ally or an accomplice. This means you are asking us to do something that is not normal, which is to trust you (literally) with our lives.

When that trust is broken, and unfortunately it happens more than we like to admit, it puts us two steps back in from the position we were in before. I will admit that this year has been very hard for me to lean in to allyship (and accomplices) because I have been hurt, my trust has been broken and it is hard to come back from that. There have been hurt feelings. There has been broken trust.

While my instinct is to be the one to reach out and mend, that's not going to happen. If I have learned anything, it is that those that have broken the trust need to be the ones to reach out. To build that trust, or at least attempt to rebuild it, responsibility and culpability must happen and that cannot continue to always be from the position of the marginalized group. If you fall into that category, and some of you know who you are, I implore you to take this message to heart. I am not holding out hope that reconciliation from that broken trust can be repaired or revisited, however I hope that it will shape how you hold to your allyship in the future with other marginalized persons or groups. When you hear us say “We are tired” or “We are exhausted”, we are speaking about it physically, but we are also speaking about it mentally and emotionally.

Decide how you want to be an ally and do it. Decide how you want to be an accomplice and do it. But know that however you choose to move going forward you are asking a group that takes trust very seriously to give that to you.