This is the first installment in a two-part series examining the difference between performative allyship and the active dismantling of systems that perpetuate racial inequity.
As the national debate over race enters a new phase, beyond questions of inclusion, communities are now confronting whether efforts to address historic inequities constitute progress or preferential treatment.
I posed a question to Angela Davis: What does the “Black liberation” fight most require now, an ally or an abolitionist?
Davis said both: “I think we need allies and I think we need abolitionists. And abolitionists’ vision is not so much about tearing down as it is about building up. And I think that in order to create the framework for reimagining, rethinking, rebuilding our society; we have to do the protest work. We have to do the abolitionist work.”
The response invites a deeper examination of what solidarity demands when Black identity, representation and access to institutional power are increasingly contested in the name of nondiscrimination. It also raises an uncomfortable question for those who consider themselves committed to racial equality: Is it enough to believe in justice? Do we need an ally or an abolitionist or must one be willing to confront the structures that determine who gets to exercise it?
I posed the same question to writers from Archiving the Avenue. “Archiving the Avenue“ is a Mellon-funded case study on cultural cornerstones of the Indiana Avenue cultural district: the work is part of a larger public humanities initiative being led by GANGGANG.
The moderate and the cost of silence
In his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. identified what he considered one of the greatest obstacles to Black freedom: the white moderate who was more devoted to order than to justice.
King was not condemning every person with moderate political views. He was criticizing people who professed support for equality while opposing the disruption required to achieve it. They preferred a peace without tension to a peace made possible by justice.
His observation remains relevant because injustice does not survive only through open hostility. It can also survive through delay, institutional deference and the insistence that those demanding change must do so in ways that preserve everyone else’s comfort.
“We want to do a little something, but we still want to … go back to our home. … Go back to our comfort,” said Mariah Ivey, a writer for Archiving the Avenue.
A moderate can be an ally. But moderation is not proof of allyship.
“I feel like there’s a safe space … where you can say, oh, I’m an ally, because I voted this way … because I sent some money … because like I showed up,” said Manon Voice, lead editor of Archiving the Avenue.
Allyship is demonstrated through conduct: whether people use their influence to confront discrimination, challenge harmful decisions and support the agency of those affected. It becomes especially consequential when doing so carries professional, political or social costs.
Voice described it as “when you put reputation, something of value on the line.”
Silence is not always evidence of complicity. People may face genuine risks, and disagreement over strategy does not automatically make someone an opponent of justice. But silence from people with the power to intervene can have consequences regardless of their intentions.
“Because an ally, there is some safety around that. There is a choice there, right? Because you can still decide to disengage,” Ivey said.
When those who profess equality remain quiet as protections are weakened, the people already most vulnerable to exclusion are left to contest the changes with fewer allies in positions of influence.
King’s warning was not that everyone must agree on every tactic. It was that a commitment to justice loses meaning when it is conditional on the absence of discomfort.
Why an abolitionist?
Davis’s answer — both an ally and an abolitionist — points toward two related but distinct responsibilities.
An ally stands with people confronting injustice and uses whatever influence they possess to challenge discriminatory treatment. An abolitionist asks whether the structures producing that injustice must be transformed.
Of being an abolitionist, Ivey said, “It’s not only more radical, but it’s a commitment to lifelong work.”
The distinction is especially important when an institution presents a structural problem as an individual one.
If a community lacks meaningful representation, an ally might advocate for inclusion within the existing governance system. An abolitionist might also ask who designed that system, who controls its decision-making authority and whether its structure permits the equitable distribution of power.
The abolitionist question is not simply who gets a seat at the table. It is who built the table, who sets its terms and whether the people invited to participate have the authority to change what happens there.
“Like, it means to grab something by the roots. … So, there is a dismantling process that comes with, I think, being an abolitionist,” Voice said.
This does not mean every institution must be dismantled or every reform is inadequate. Nor does it mean that representation alone guarantees justice. A representative body can be diverse and still exclude the communities it claims to serve.
It means that inclusion and structural transformation are different projects, and both may be necessary.
An ally can help secure access. An abolitionist can help interrogate the conditions under which that access is granted, restricted or withdrawn.
Eunice Trotter, a writer for Archiving the Avenue, reminded us that even historical abolitionists warrant that scrutiny.
“They’re anti-slavery. They’re anti-wrongdoing, but they’re not necessarily pro-Black,” Trotter said. “… They helped us get out of slavery, were they necessarily pro- us?”
The struggle requires people willing to thoroughly examine the help received. It may be solely abolitionist, or it may be both.
That brings us back to Davis’s answer.
An ally or an abolitionist?
Both.
“Do we need allyship at all?” Ivey asked.
It is a question many pose. Modern allies must prove they are not what King called “moderates.” This work must be filled with people who will challenge injustice even when doing so unsettles institutions and relationships from which they benefit. We need abolitionists who will question the structures that make exclusion possible and imagine alternatives that distribute power more equitably. And we need to hold both accountable to the people whose freedom they claim to support.
King understood that the demand for order can become a way of postponing justice. Davis’s abolitionist tradition asks us to consider whether the institutions we seek to reform can deliver the freedom we envision.
Contact Health and Environmental Reporter LaTasha Boyd Jones at tashaj@indyrecorder.com or follow her on social media @iamtashajones.
Tasha Jones is a poet, writer, researcher, and educator whose work explores language as a tool for liberation and resistance. She hosts In the Beginning: The Spoken Word Podcast, the #1 spoken word podcast on Apple and Spotify. Tasha is also the Poems & Parables Literary Journal editor and is currently writing Pyramids. Plantations. Projects. Penitentiaries. You can follow her on social media: @iamtashajones, @itbspokenwordpod, and @poemsandparables.
