A new event series engages in what racial allyship looks like for a white person
The first event of the Active Allyship Series, Race and White Allyship, was held at Azusa Pacific on Sept. 25. The Student Center for Reconciliation and Diversity (SCRD) organized the event, where a panel of APU faculty and staff members led a discussion about racial justice and what it means to be an active ally as a white individual.
The panelists included Director of Strategic Partnerships in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Joshua Canada, Jessica Wong, Ph.D., from the Theology Department, Justin Smith, Ph.D., and Kay Smith, Ph.D., from the Biblical Studies Department, Austin Welty, the local engagement coordinator for the Center for Student Action, Michael Dean Clark, Ph. D., from the English Department and Kate Kimanzi, the Study Away associate director.
“Our office is focusing this year on how to provide action steps for the community,” said Amanda Deal, program intern for SCRD. “It’s so important to sit in the issues and think about them, but then we can’t forget that there’s stuff to be done after that. We developed the Active Allyship series as a way to provide action steps for people who are committed to the conversation.”
Deal encouraged attendees to lean into discomfort when participating in this conversation. She emphasized that if a discussion topic made someone uncomfortable, it’s usually a sign there’s something important to learn.
During the presentation, the word ally was defined as, “a member of a dominant culture who is working to end the systemic privilege they benefit from in that dominant culture.”
“You can’t self-define [as an ally]… It should be defined as people who are saying that you are actively advocating for their group, their population,” Welty said. “The second we start deciding that we get to self-define is taking something away that doesn’t belong to us.”
Wong added on to this.
“To truly become an ally—you have to become a friend,” she said
The panelists said attending events such as this one are a great first step to becoming an ally.
Deal also prompted the panelists to describe how they became aware of their racial identity.
“The internal journey happened for me as a child in those different encounters of micro and macro aggressions… You start to learn more about yourself as you learn about this collective identity,” Kimanzi said.
Wong described how her parents promoted the “ideal” of colorblindness, resulting in no discussion of race growing up.
“It was around that time that I started to ask the question if I could pass as white,” Wong said. “How could I know, at the age of 5 years old, the advantages of whiteness?
In addition to the questions, Deal led the attendees in an exercise in which everyone recieved a handout with a wheel chart; it had sections with different areas of self-identity to fill in such as race, ethnicity, gender, biological sex, sexual orientation and socio-economic status, among others.
Attendees were asked which identities they thought about most and which ones they thought about least. After the questions were asked, each table was given time to discuss the ideas.
Chelsea Sulker-Hall, a senior communication studies major, found the event to be pleasantly surprising.
“I felt that the event was really impactful and informative. The speakers were able to find ways to speak to everyone in the room despite our differences,” she said.
Deal said some people like to use the demographic statistics of APU as a way to prove that there’s not a problem with racism or prejudice.
“Even though we have a predominantly diverse student body, the dominant culture is still very much white culture,” Deal said. “Just because we have diverse people doesn’t mean we don’t have problems with racism.”
Applications were made across many platforms. Clark connected the discussion to technology and explained that if choices on social media are predominantly choosing something towards your own likeness, the algorithm will give back what makes you comfortable.
Smith said this idea applies to movies as well.
“We don’t talk about white movies or white television shows, but we’ll talk about an Asian movie or a black movie,” said Smith. “What we are doing when we say that is that this is inherently ‘other,’ it is not normal. We are presented with the normalcy of whiteness, and therefore it becomes invisible.”
At the end of the presentation, Deal gave resources on campus to continue involvement. These included the new club Allies for Change, monthly SCRD events, and ethnic organizations like the Latin American Student Association (LASA), Pacific Islander Organization (PIO) and Black Student Association (BSA).
There will be three more workshops throughout the school year; each will tackle what it means to be an active ally in different spheres of life