A Response to Kier Gray's "Why I Don't Believe in Allyship"

Quick Thoughts on an all-too-familiar tale of interactions with the Social Justice community.

Forward: I was emailed Gray’s article by a friend who asked for my thoughts on them, I replied in an e-mail and I’m reposting what I wrote here. My response was “intended” for an audience of one within the context of a personal conversation and not as an article or post. I’m not familiar with Gray or their work, and this is not intended to supportive or as a rebuke - it’s just my in-the-moment reaction.

Firstly, you should read the original post here. It’s a quick read.

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Before reading the article, my basic points are: 

1 - Ally is a verb, not a noun. You can't "be" an ally, it's a description of something you've done. A lot of people describe themselves as LGBT allies when what they mean is "I rooted for the gay couple in Will & Grace". I think Scott Alexander has written himself into overrated status, but "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup" is still a banger. 

2 - Allyship in the modern usage is group-based, which I think is terrible and backwards. I support people as individuals, not because I think they deserve it due to their skin color, religion, or whose junk they like to put in their mouth, etc. This group shit is so flimsy anyways, there's clearly a relatively singular axis: "Us" (People I like) and "Them" (People I don't like) and group identities will gumby themselves to reflect the true axis (for eg, the "Black men are the white people of black people" take which is not uncommon among online progressive peoples) of liked and disliked. Of course, individual behavior has nothing to do with it and I'll die screaming that this is unmodified 18th-century Race Sciencism.

Ok, now that I've read the article: 

1 - Sometimes I think J. K. Rowling's biggest crime was popularizing the "Identity Houses" (ie, this house is for brave people, this house is for smart people, etc) that has basically defined the Young Adult Fiction for the past 25 years. I don't think it's a coincidence that there's a ton of overlap between online social justice community and harry potter fan groups, or that the online trans-activism community is so angry at her -so many used her world to build their identity systems and kind of worshipped her in a pop-idol type of way. And of course, JK Rowling is a woman and the communities that hate her the most are the most overwhelmingly female.

1b - More and more, I think there is a big split between the online world and the "real" world. They were merging throughout the 2010s, they're separating again.

2 - Taiwo's pull quote is right on. I have come to view the online social justice world as essentially a conspiracy: Middle and upper middle class people attempting to launder their white guilt, along with people who are happy to catalog that guilt for them. I still am upset that in all the hullabaloo over the Color of the Game tweet, no one thought twice about the idea that "maybe a bunch of black players who went to MIT and Emery and Carleton *don't* speak to the poor black kids the event was "meant" to speak to. But of course, I maintain, the functional goal of the event (and, uncontroversially, the only lasting impact of the event) was for supporters to feel good about themselves. I don't think it's a total coincidence that the youth scene in Atlanta has collapsed when it seems the people in charge have a difficult time differentiating between satisfying themselves and achieving social justice. 

3 - Side note: Robin DiAngelo's work makes a TON more sense if you read it as self-criticism, i.e. criticism of her own life and the people that support her work. It's kind of like asking who the conceptual villains of "Get Out" are - is it White Liberals or White Progressives? To me, it's the latter: The family is vocal about their allyship, and the daughter feels shame over and tries to evade the issue of her family's wealth. 

4 - "I followed directives without evaluating whether or not they aligned with my values" - Not many people cease this behavior, most people just find a new person to give them directives, the same way abused kids grow up to find abusive partners. Statements like this are both semi-heartening, but also terrifying. 

4b - This is downstream of the valorization of "Emotional Intelligence" in our schooling system that started to really rise in the late 90s. Emotional Intelligence is a fancy word for Sociability and the highly-social are massively more prone to being victims of group-think; but for 20 years we've been pushing the highly-sociable children to the top of scholastic pile, and, well, now they're on top of the pile. Surprise surprise, "Contrarians" are denigrated and considered outright suspect as a class. Of course!

5 - One of the extremely predictable outcomes of identity based thinking: "My gender and sexuality gave me free rein to treat straight men with contempt, condescension and hostility". This has been the hallmark of basically every extremely shitty period in human history (that is - identity-based disparagement and hostility; not straights or men) - the favored and disfavored groups change, the behavior doesn't. 

6 - See #5: "it was clear that we weren’t getting any closer to distributing power more evenly. What we’d done was [inverted] the social hierarchy and [placed] new people at the top." I've been saying this for like, 15 years. It's crazy to me that the entire world hasn't seen it too. 

6b - There's a longstanding feud I have with the ultimate reddit that is, Calling Timeout so you can win a game by taking it into the hard cap against a team you think will come back and beat you is against Spirit of the Game". My opinion is, you get the W by playing - by running faster, jumping higher, throwing more accurately, and making better choices in a chaotic, dynamic environment. Winning by standing on the sideline doesn't show that you're the best at any of those things and thus I would never feel like I "earned" the W (I'm also someone who burned my college degree when I learned that a professor had given me a rubber stamp A on a course, even though I felt I deserved an A anyhow). The point is, why don't people in these groups bristle at the fact that they're not really accomplishing much if anything at all? (My answer: because they're actually accomplishing the goals that matter to them - see #5)

7 - "there’s an alternative: good old fashioned solidarity. Solidarity requires us..." - this is a semantic argument and kind of harkens back to #4. The reliance on labels portends that maybe not much has changed in the way Mr. Gray thinks. Just do the thing, let historians give it a name. 

8 - Overall, good. But alas, I feel like I'm the choir being preached to here. I had thought that when Dan Savage could support the Iraq War and still remain in the holiest of graces of Urban Progressives that he was above goofball takedowns; I thought Obama would be immune from the ire of the online social justice people - and I thought that kind of like the Salem Witch Trials, eventually the accussors would go too far and someone like Obama or Savage would ring out when they said enough is enough and we'd return to the post-Diebold late 2000's equilibrium. Now I don't really have any idea where things will stop, but it seems the Zoomers/Gen Alpha kind of think that Being Online itself is sort of cringe, so maybe that will be enough to get us to a healthier place. 

8b - I do think the nature of online interaction (and NOT social media - read the history of usenet flame wars to understand this existed almost from the beginning of the public internet) does lead itself to increased polarization, so if the generation starting enter college over the next few years isn't as into being online, I think that's probably good. It remains to be seen if we'll ever revert to a more heavily in-person social world or if the Bowling Alone hypothesis continues to be prescient.