Kwanzaa for White Allies, Day 3: Intentionally Growing the Movement

Expanding Others’ Concept of Allyship Can Be Done in a Way that Helps You Too

Although created to specifically resonate with the people from the African diaspora, Kwanzaa is a time of reflection during the interregnum between Christmas and New Year’s Day that can have value for any social change agent. This includes anti-racism allies.

As mentioned in the previous articles in this series (Day 1 and Day 2), white allies need to think seriously about four important domains of allyship: 1) sustaining their own journey as anti-racists, 2) supporting people of color, 3) converting racism skeptics to new thinking, and 4) growing the ally community. It is this last domain, working to expand the capacity of one’s group, that is most spoken to by Day 3 of Kwanza, which is focused on “ujima,” which translates to collective work and responsibility. According to the official Kwanzaa website, ujima calls on us to “build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems and to solve them together.”

Undermining Ally Toxicity

What might it mean for white ally to act on a sense of personal responsibility to create common cause designed to help the ally community? One important…