Like last newsletter, we’re bringing in a massive topic that we couldn’t imagine even scratching the surface of in one newsletter. There is so much here to cover that is essential for us to understand in order to be effective allies. 

As a White settler (not indigenous) living on stolen lands with practically everyone I interact with from my friends to store clerks also being settlers of various ancestry, I have noticed how prevalent it is to refer to Indigenous Americans in the past tense. I was gently called in on it a few years ago by someone who pointed out that using the past tense when referring to Indigenous peoples is, to be blunt, violent language. It subtly erases the fact that Indigenous people are fighting for their cultural and physical survival against state-sanctioned violence. Right. Now. 

Once I started to see this pervasive syntactic pattern, I trained myself to catch when I was slipping into it, and share that perspective with others when I notice it. The powerful thing about language is that when we make changes to it, our stories of the world change with it. Instead of thinking about Indigenous peoples and their history as something that happened in the past and can’t be changed, I began thinking about their wellbeing and their history as something that I get to impact with my actions. 

This newsletter is dedicated to giving a *very brief* introduction the topic of Indigenous history of the United States–the history we didn’t get but needed. In future editions, we’ll be sharing more on how you can get involved and have a real impact in healing the harms that have been, and continue to be, enacted on Indigenous people in this country. 

Gillian

This week’s newsletter comes to you after a breaking story hit the media last week, “Home Appraised With a Black Owner: $472,000. With a White Owner: $750,000” from the New York Times (we recommend you read the entire story). Unfortunately, racism in Real Estate is not breaking news, but what’s different in this example is that rather than the discrimination being insidious and hard to prove, these Black homeowners, one of them a professor of Redlining and racism, knew they were being discriminated against and set up a “whitewashing” experiment to prove it.

It’s vitally important, as allies, that we understand the history of racism and housing so we can repair the damage together. The American institutions that dictate rules of engagement for land and home-ownership is inseparable from indigenous genocide, enslavement of African-heritage people, and white supremacy/ racism.

So this week, we bring you three resources to uplift your education around the history of racism in housing practices, how that impacts people of color’s lives in many other critical dimensions, and what we can do about it.

Gillian

When I started my journey towards becoming an effective ally (I didn’t start there, nobody does), I was deeply ashamed and guilty about my ignorance around race and racism. How could I have spent my whole life ignorant of this massive dimension of existence–race?! I didn’t yet understand that the system is designed to keep white people complacent and asleep. To say I was reeling from the realization and overcompensating for my pain is an understatement!

I became a rampant evangelizer of anti-racism work with my friends, colleagues, random strangers on the street. Instead of appealing to peoples’ humanity and inviting them into the work, I pressured them in efforts to “rescue” them from the same fate as me.

And all this was so that, together, we could “rescue” people of color from the violence of racism. What a joke that was! I guarantee you nobody has healed or transformed any pain body through coercion and pressure. It has to come from the heart.

Over time as I learned more about the history and context of racism, I was seasoned and came to take it all less personally. I grew to acknowledge my role as a collaborator and partner in healing racism. I made space for my pain (still do all the time) and metabolized it into empathy and humility. And I’ve started to tell my story in efforts to cultivate a community of learners and strong allies like you!

One of the most helpful frameworks for me in shifting my consciousness has been the Dreaded Drama Triangle to the Empowerment Dynamic and this newsletter breaks down that framework for you to apply to your own growth and learning!

You make likely hundreds of decisions a week that are micro-opportunities to be an effective ally. From the workplace of choosing vendors and new hires, to home of selecting where you buy food and gas, to your relationships of who you spend time with, you have more influence than you think in how our world is shaped. 

And of course, how currency flows is a huge determining factor in who has power and choice in our society. Where money goes, prosperity in other areas follow. For too long, people of African heritage have been deprived equal access to financial wealth, and as a result, have suffered greatly in comparison to people with lighter skin. 

We’ve compiled these three resources to help you make informed choices about who you’re supporting with your consumer choices, to learn about an important historical event in the trajectory of growing Black wealth in America, and to be invited to grow on the Ally Ring journey with us through Robert’s story of going the extra mile to set up an account with a Black-owned bank. 

P.S. Don’t forget to let us know your feedback, stories, and questions! And check out our resources page for information on the 4-Step Journey of becoming a more effective ally. 

Are you all staying cool out there?! Unfortunately, as global temps are rising, so is wealth inequality. Coincidence?! Probably not. 

One could argue that of all the “-isms” (and of course, patriarchy) there are two factors that drive them: money and power. The more money one has, the more influence they can extend into politicians’ pockets to keep them safe from taxes, corporate penalties, and other tools for creating wealth equality. Right now, we have a growing elite whose power rivals that of politicians, but instead of being voted into power by the people, they are being put into power through extractive means that are also causing harm to people and our planet (think–prison industry, arms and weapons, fossil fuel etc.) Unfortunately, we all know it’s not as if doing good in the world always translates into big returns. 

So, learning about wealth inequality and how it came to be is critical to begin facing it as a nation. I appreciated the metaphor that the difference between wealth inequality and income inequality is that wealth is like the water already in the bathtub and income is the water coming out of the faucet into the tub. Inherited wealth is a buffer that gets passed down over generations and continues to GROW as it just sits there in investment funds. 

Clearly the system needs to change. It starts with you and me getting out there, doing our research on which politicians are working to help balance and which are further aggravating the situation…and VOTE!

Gillian

So, after last week, I can’t help but be left wondering…what exactly do we mean by “Supreme” Court???

This was a rough couple of weeks for the United States Supreme Court from the point of view of those of us who are fighting for the rights and opportunities of marginalized people. In addition to the shocking reversal of Roe vs. Wade, we saw a lessening of restrictions on carrying guns, an encouragement of limiting voting influence, and an expansion of a public school staff member’s ability to lead students in prayer.

Young people with uteruses suddenly have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers did, and are in more danger as a result. All of us are now in more danger from the easy access to and ease of being able to carry concealed weapons, our votes are slated to mean less and the phrase “separation of church and state” seems to have lost a sizable chunk of its meaning. All in the same week! How are you all doing out there?!

As I recall, the Supreme Court was an unbiased backstop to keep political rhetoric and argument in check, to keep things real. But sadly, if this past week is any indication, the highest court has become just as political as the other two branches of government, without the ability to vote them out if “we the people” do not like their approach. Yikes!

What we can do, and it’s more important than ever, is VOTE!!!  How we vote clearly will determine the direction of future courts and will create the opportunity to legislate the laws that the court enforces.

In the mean time, here are three ally focused articles about the decisions mentioned above…

NOTE:  Researching for this edition got to be very frustrating for me.  I apologize for getting a little snarky and sarcastic below.  I have put those kinds of comments in italics just in case you were wondering if I was being serious…

Robert

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!! 

This is our first newsletter we’re sending to you that is focused on bringing light and attention to a marginalized group that is not directly linked to race, racism, & colorism. How we support social justice in one area ripples liberation into all of them! So you will see us share content about how to use your privilege to be an ally to all peoples. 

Have you ever wondered over the years, especially as the acronym has expanded, where did LGBTQIA+ come from? Language is such a vital part of movements like ours seeking to bring the margins to the center. If there aren’t ways to talk about who experiences oppression and how we envision their freedom and value in our culture, then we can’t ally with others to make that real!

There’s a lot happening in the news right now about anti-gay efforts to thwart pride celebrations, conversion therapy legislation, Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill being adopted by other states, and more. As we only send out two of these a month, and there is a LOT of work for us to do, narrowing it down is challenging! We could focus on the policy level which has huge implications for peoples’ well-being and personal lives. However, we wanted to focus this month on bringing you education on how to be a better ally by understanding the varied experiences, traumas, and how to ally in support of LGBTQIA+ people.

If you only have time for one, check out the first resource. It’s the best one out there to learn about the many phrases and terms represented in the “+” that would start to look like we were saying the numbers of pi if we tried to include them all! Bookmark and share with friends and family, too, if they have any questions!

It doesn’t take a mind-reader to guess what you’re feeling right now about the impact of America’s unsafe relationship with guns. As a member of the Ally Ring community, you are passionate about contributing to a future where the color of your skin doesn’t affect your safety and wellbeing. Right now, Black Americans are harmed by gun violence at an overwhelmingly disproportionate rate to white Americans. In addition to feeling anywhere on the spectrum from grief, to rage, to despair and numbness, you might also be wondering…WHY is challenging the right to carry arms such an uphill battle for our country?

One answer is…you guessed it! Racism. 

While a more complete answer to that question is greater than we can take on in one newsletter, it’s important to understand how racism contributed to both the creation of the Second Ammendment as well as gun control laws and how you can help to make a difference.

If you do a search of “racist roots of gun laws”, you are sure to be innundated with articles detailing the history and present-day impact of racism on American gun legislation–both the Constitutional “Second Ammendment” right to bear arms as well as State laws. As with most of what we share with you from Ally Ring, unfortunately there is no shortage of readily-available information on how racism, and especially anti-Blackness, seeps into unjust decisions made on every level from our personal lives to government policy. 

We’ve digested a great deal of material on this topic over the last few weeks to bring you what we feel are the best resources to get involved learning about and solving this massive injustice. As always, we’d love to hear what this discussion moves in you and what you’re wanting more of! Thank you for being on this journey with us. 

Racism is a pandemic. It takes Black and Brown lives through subversive, “normalized” unjust policies, resulting in food deserts/apartheids, lowered life expectancy (especially since the start of covid), and higher maternal & infant mortality rates. 

But it also takes lives in violent, explosive acts of white supremacy such as the Buffalo shooting that happened last week. 

Rather than just reporting on the atrocity, we want to focus on growing discernment and analysis of how media reporting of these losses can either lead towards healing and evolution, or, deepen the racial divide and even influence future attacks (more on that in the first article!) With more awareness of the important nuances of reporting, we can choose to read and share stories with our networks that amplify healing instead of hate. 

After a racist attack, which tragically are all too common, it is natural to wonder, “how could someone do this?!” and be drawn in to articles that focus on “the suspect”. As allies, a lot of our work is to be more conscious of how our actions are either supporting racial healing or hurting advancement. This includes how we feed the attention economy! In this case, if we give our time to the suspect, we might be unknowingly perpetuating the automatic centering of whiteness over learning about how black communities are impacted. In reading these three articles shared here, I was moved to read the stories of how tight-knit and supportive the black community is in Buffalo. I can safely assume that this frame is not shared in articles centering on the suspect.

This isn’t to say don’t learn about the suspect and the racist ideologies that fueled them, but consider first how you are seeking information about the Black people whose lives have been taken. Read stories of the holes that are left behind both in their families and communities as well as igniting fear for all Black and Brown-skinned people that this could happen to any of them. 

If more people were to do that, we might have a world that channels resources towards repairing what has been broken instead of fueling racism!