True Allyship and the Willingness to be Uncomfortable

<p>If you’re like most mindful people right now, you are responding to racial injustice and the Black Lives Matter movement and the awakening that has resulted from the murder of George Floyd and those before him - and those after as well.</p><p>You may be engaging deeply or supporting materially or recommitting yourself to anti-racism work and education for the long-haul. You may have questions, be grappling with how best to take action and show up, or be wondering what true allyship looks like and how you can embody it, now and always.</p><p>All this might look different if you’re a white person thinking through the complexities and limitations but <strong>necessity</strong> of allyship, or a non-Black person of color possibly already steeped the various ways to stand in solidarity with the movement for Black lives.</p><p>The truth is, at the most basic level of true allyship and the heart of what anti-racism work requires is this simple thing that many people – white folks in particular – still actively struggle with, whether they’re conscious of it or not: a genuine willingness to be <strong>uncomfortable</strong>.</p><p>This work is not easy. It’s not clean and it’s not pretty and if you think you can show up for the movement without ever having to step outside your comfort zone, you’ve got another thing coming.</p><p>One thing that goes hand-in-hand with – and is often a product of – someone’s UNwillingness to be uncomfortable is the focus of this episode: a harmful habit called <strong>tone policing</strong>.</p><h3>Let’s break this down.</h3><p>In her book <i>Me and White Supremacy</i> and her Instagram course on this topic (see ‘Resources’ below), Layla Saad describes tone policing as “a tactic used by those who have privilege to silence those who don’t by focusing on the ‘tone’ of what is being said, rather than the actual content.</p><p>It is when white people ask BIPOC to say what they’re saying in a ‘nicer’ way.</p><p>It’s saying (or thinking) things like: I can’t take in what you’re telling me about