Dismantling White Supremacy: How to Be an Ally for Collective Liberation

Allyship is more than adding a hashtag or switching out your profile picture. Collective liberation can only come from collective action — and a common goal.

By Alex Free

White supremacy (n): the belief that white people are a superior race, and therefore should dominate society.

If the result wasn’t lifelong oppression and sanctioned violence, it would be almost comical how scared white folks are of sharing power with marginalized folks. How terrified they are of giving up their place of privilege — even though it is ludicrous to claim privilege based on your skin color. They seem convinced that treating us with dignity, respect, and equal rights will somehow be a loss for them and even cause them harm.

Worse yet, white supremacy is a social system whose structure impacts the beliefs and lives of everyone, regardless of race. Its insidious nature has created in-fighting and colored (pun intended) our views of others (see: model minority myth, LA Uprising, colorism). It’s like they knew that if they could get us to focus on fighting each other, we would forget the overarching oppressive systems that harm us all.

And for centuries, this white supremacist tactic has worked.

Everything that you would define as America today has been the product or byproduct of rape, pillaging, and the murder of Indigenous people at the hands of colonizers. They built their success exclusively off the backs of slaves (see: White House, universities). We live on stolen land that was never ours to claim and was taken by brutal force.

White supremacy isn’t just our history; it’s our culture, education, textbooks, laws, and governmental systems. It’s how we as individuals see others and benchmark our success. Its insidious nature makes it so dangerous — it is a learned mentality rooted in generations of oppression and harm. It leads many of us to think that maybe, just maybe, if we talk a certain way, work hard enough, make enough money, get a particular education — we will be safe. It tells us that if we can somehow edge our way closer to the white center of power and privilege, we can then be treated with respect.

This narrative is so harmful. By seeking homogeneity with our oppressors, we lose ourselves and what makes us powerful. It leaves us focusing on the concept of othering instead of unification. It has us focusing on personal gain instead of uplifting whole communities. It makes us feel that stepping on others (as many have done before us) is the only way to claw our way out of oppression.

We are taught white supremacy. We are raised in white supremacy. We’ve internalized white supremacy.

And it must end.

Dismantling white supremacy and the systems created by it can feel like an impossible task, but I believe it can be done.

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Alex Free (they/she) is a fierce mental health & social justice advocate who focuses on topics spanning intersectionality, reproductive health, disrupting rape culture, healing & trauma, identity, and dismantling white supremacy. They are a creator, storyteller, speaker, survivor leader, and yogi as well as an intersectional, trauma-informed facilitator of social justice and healing spaces. Alex speaks about their own journey as someone who lives with AuDHD, CPTSD, chronic pain, and other chronic illnesses and believes there is power in our stories. They are also a queer, non-binary femme who was displaced through trans-racial and trans-national adoption. Their hope is that each of us goes on the journey to decolonize our minds and our spaces so we can truly fight for collective liberation for all of us.