REAL ALLYSHIP

When you talk about allyship or being an effective ally, it really starts with understanding the  contexts that surround the issues that you want to support with. There is no excuse for this and am appalled by the the hostility and unrestrained anger directed against a particular group or entity because they think they hold the moral high ground on the issue. 

Here are some of the things that are not allyship:

1. Taking sides and making comments without understanding and knowledge of the issues, e.g. companies doing Black hiring, promotions, or donating as part of 'looking and feeling good' without the benefit of embedding these principles as areas for action. 

2. Being supportive doesn't mean taking a blind eye on excesses. If your partner or the party you're siding with has committed a grave error of judgement or seemed too morally superior and doesn't receive constructive comments from the other parties,  it's better to point that out early on before the real crisis starts. 

3. Don't mouth word salads that seemed to be the flavor of the month and be gone in the new few months. It becomes pathetic when you sound like a parrot talking about decolonialization, white supremacy, apartheid, and other concepts that pit people against one another as a zero-sum game. Chants like from the river to the sea is a nice slogan but totally stupid. It calls for the total annihilation of a state. Regardless of where you stand in the Israel-Palestine conflict, it's like putting coal in already burning situation. It masked the real issues at hand, and in practically, these word salads do not make sense in real-time cessation of hostilities much less the deep-seated anger, hatred, and trauma experienced by many parties.

Being an ally should be informed by reason and not by zealotry based on misinformation and fake news. Check your facts and know that there is definitely a more peaceful and less confrontational method of getting into solutions. The biggest obstacle is the mindset that the world needs to change because a few people said so. 

Are you an ally or a complicit part of the web of agitation for the sake of stirring more conflict and paranoia? If you're not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.