Allyship, Part III – An Interview with Dr. Karina Aveyard
How White Colleagues Can Create Space for Women of Colour
Karina Aveyard (she/her) is an Associate Professor in Media and Film and a Postgraduate Research Director in the School of Art, Media, and American Studies at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. She researches and writes about the social and cultural aspects of media production and consumption.
Her books include the Historical Dictionary of Australian and New Zealand Cinema (2018, co-authored), New Patterns in Global Television Formats (2016, co-edited), and The Lure of the Big Screen: Cinema in Rural Australia and the United Kingdom (2015).
Karina Aveyard | Professor and author
To me, allyship is grounded in solidarity and support. It is about standing beside or with someone. Not helping them out of benevolence or self-interest, but instead stepping out of the centre.
“Allyship” has become quite a buzzword in recent years. What does it mean to you?
Allyship is a term that has been increasingly popular for sure. It is an important word and an important concept, although I don’t think it is used quite as much as it could or should be. We tend to hear instead a lot about diversity and inclusion, which are also important, but semantically these words come from quite different places and have different meanings.
Diversity and inclusion don’t always shift or alter concentrations of power. Diversity is often articulated as and seen as being achieved when the centre of power or influence (being typically white, heteronormative and Western) becomes populated with greater difference. It can sometimes feel as though the goal of creating visible indicators/evidence of diversity becomes an end in itself. This limits thinking about next steps. We need to ask, what happens after the initial process of creating more equal spaces for the presence of difference?
There can sometimes be quite a performative aspect to diversity too - if the centre of power can demonstrate it is diverse (for example, through people of colour in educational advertising) then those with this inherited power can distance or protect themselves from accusations of being racists, colonialists or homophobic, or whatever it might be. At times it seems that the desire on the part of the already privileged (person or institution) to assert themselves as progressive and liberal occupies a disproportionately large part of the diversity conversation. When this happens, the centre of power continues to talk about itself (just that it is now saying different things), and privilege is maintained rather than disrupted because those in positions of power continue to determine the dominate frameworks of dialogue. This limits the opportunities for real change, despite the constructed rhetoric that this is what positive action on diversity is achieving.
How do you see allyship show up in your work?
To me, allyship is grounded in solidarity and support. It is about standing beside or with someone. Not helping them out of benevolence or self-interest, but instead stepping out of the centre, asking what can we do to be a support - and actually listening to that answer and acting on it. In doing so the centre of power can communicate very powerfully that it takes people, in this case, women of colour, seriously, but without trying to align itself to their marginalisation - which of course they cannot possibly understand from their own privileged lived experience, even if one has a progressive sensibility.
How do you think we can move from performative allyship to real, purposeful, and intentional allyship?
At a pop-psychology level, allyship remains performative when it is about ‘us’ (the centre of power/privilege). Those holding power/privilege need to step out of some of the collective space of humanity and allow that space to be taken up by those who have been previously marginalised and excluded from it - and most importantly do not try to determine how they populate and use it.
For me, it is about trying to listen and act in ways that support the progress of others, including using the small access to power I have to make effective changes, albeit on a very localised, minor scale. I ask questions, I am interested in understanding other points of view and other experiences, and in having my understanding of the world expanded and enriched, and sharing that with others.
What are some ways white colleagues and leadership can create space for WOC?
Creating environments where people feel they will be respected and listened to is very important. Making sure the factors that limit or prevent WOC from equitable participation and progression are well understood (and the key to that is listening, not just assuming we all have the answers to that), and taking steps in work and management policies and practices that materially address those issues.
What are some gaps you have noticed when it comes to allyship?
When you think about it, inclusivity for example, is quite a problematic term. It suggests the act of bringing something (or someone) into a pre-configured or pre-determined space, and that is the pre-existing centre of power which continues to set the terms and scope of participation. The major gap is in actually understanding how these spaces need to be altered to shift power dynamics entirely. In order to do that, de-centering power (whiteness in this case) is key in moving from performative allyship to adopting meaningful steps to support marginalized groups.
“Those holding power/privilege need to step out of some of the collective space of humanity and allow that space to be taken up by those who have been previously marginalised and excluded from it - and most importantly do not try to determine how they populate and use it.”