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TO BE AN ALLY IS TO... (amélie lamont)

  • Take on the struggle as your own.

  • Transfer the benefits of your privilege to those who lack it.

  • Amplify voices of the oppressed before your own.

  • Acknowledge that even though you feel pain, the conversation is not about you.

  • Stand up, even when you feel scared.

  • Own your mistakes and de-center yourself.

  • Understand that your education is up to you and no one else.

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WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A BLM ALLY

Being an ally to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement means actively working to dismantle systemic racism and support Black communities. This involves recognizing and challenging racism, advocating for policy changes, and promoting racial equality. It's about using your privilege and power to amplify Black voices and create a more just and equitable society. 

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Here's a more detailed look at what it means:

  • Recognize and challenge racism:

    Understand that racism is a system of oppression that impacts Black people differently than others. This includes recognizing microaggressions and biases in your own thinking and actions. 

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  • Actively advocate for change:

    Support policies and laws that address racial inequality, such as criminal justice reform, voting rights, and economic justice. 

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  • Listen and amplify Black voices:

    Seek out Black perspectives and experiences, and use your platform to share them with others. 

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  • Educate yourself and others:

    Learn about the history of racism and its impact on Black communities, and share this information with others. 

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  • Take action:

    Participate in protests, donate to organizations that support Black communities, and support Black-owned businesses. 

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  • Be accountable:

    Acknowledge your own biases and prejudices, and be willing to learn and grow. 

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  • Show up consistently:

    Allyship is not a one-time event, but an ongoing commitment to supporting Black communities. 

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  • Don't be a savior:

    Avoid the role of a white savior. Instead, work alongside Black people to achieve shared goals. 

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  • Support Black voices and stories:

    Amplify the voices of Black activists, organizers, and community leaders. 

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  • Be a lifelong learner:

    Continuously seek to understand the experiences of Black people and learn how to be a better ally. 

BIAS

  • Explicit Bias
    Biases that you are consciously aware of, and that you admit to yourself and potentially others.

  • Implicit Bias
    These are biases that are subtly expressed. We don’t initially detect or intend implicit biases, but they can become more apparent with tools and careful self-introspection.  (Jerry Kang)

Bias is a preference in favor of, or against a person, group of people, or thing. These initial human reactions, which are often unconscious, are rooted in inaccurate information or reason and are potentially harmful. Biases are also part of being human. Once we know and accept we have bias, we can begin to recognize our own patterns of thinking. With awareness and a conscious effort, we have the power to change how we think and to challenge the negative or harmful biases within ourselves. (Howard Ross) -Talking About Race: Bias (National Museum of African American History and Culture

  • How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them

  • Our biases can be dangerous, even deadly — as we've seen in the cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner, in Staten Island, New York. Diversity advocate Vernā Myers looks closely at some of the subconscious attitudes we hold toward out-groups. She makes a plea to all people: Acknowledge your biases. Then move toward, not away from, the groups that make you uncomfortable. In a funny, impassioned, important talk, she shows us how.

  • Can We Overcome Racial Bias? 'Biased' Author Says To Start By Acknowledging It

  • Jennifer Eberhardt writes about her decades of experience studying race and our everyday interactions — and suggests that in order to overcome our own racial biases, we must acknowledge them.

  • The Double Standard It’s easy to spot bias in other people, especially those with whom we disagree. But it’s not so easy to recognize our own biases. Psychologist Emily Pronin says it’s partly because of our brain architecture, we explore what Pronin calls the introspection illusion.

  • How Racial Bias Works — and How to Disrupt It Our brains create categories to make sense of the world, recognize patterns and make quick decisions. But this ability to categorize also exacts a heavy toll in the form of unconscious bias. In this powerful talk, psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt explores how our biases unfairly target Black people at all levels of society -- from schools and social media to policing and criminal justice -- and discusses how creating points of friction can help us actively interrupt and address this troubling problem.

  • How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them Our biases can be dangerous, even deadly — as we've seen in the cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner, in Staten Island, New York. Diversity advocate Vernā Myers looks closely at some of the subconscious attitudes we hold toward out-groups. She makes a plea to all people: Acknowledge your biases. Then move toward, not away from, the groups that make you uncomfortable. In a funny, impassioned, important talk, she shows us how.

  • Implicit Bias -- how it effects us and how we push through | Melanie Funchess | TEDxFlourCity - Everyone makes assumptions about people they don’t know. Melanie Funchess will teach us to recognize these assumptions and work toward a common understanding.

  • Talking About Race: Bias (National Museum of African American History and Culture) Once we know and accept we have bias, we can begin to recognize our own patterns of thinking. With awareness and a conscious effort, we have the power to change how we think and to challenge the negative or harmful biases within ourselves.

ISSUES POC ARE FACING WITH THIS ADMINISTRATION

“The impact is catastrophic. They are scaling back possibly, nearly all enforcement that they have been doing for decades on civil rights statutes they’re required to enforce,” said Stacey Young, a longtime Civil Rights Division attorney who now runs Justice Connection.

“This is a monumental shift in the way the division operates, and it’s going to result in American civil rights not being protected as they almost always have been.”

‘Black Lives Matter’ The Mural Said In Giant Yellow Lettering

The 35ft words dominated the road leading to the White House. That was until March 10th, 2025.

A month and a half after Trump took office, municipal workers with drills and pickaxes arrived to tear it up. And there was much more to come.

The facts are the facts, not whatever “story” you decide to make up.

A Message and Action to take from Public Citizen

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Sunday marked five years since George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.

The American people rose up in protest — to an inspiring and unprecedented degree. We demanded reforms to policing. We examined questions of race in our communities, in our businesses and organizations, in our civic structures. We talked seriously about systemic racism and undertook genuine efforts to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion.

But then came the (seemingly inevitable) backlash.

People who knew better went back to denying the obvious reality that law enforcement gets too much of our tax dollars to do too many things that it is ill-suited to do, if not downright hostile to doing.

Donald Trump won reelection largely on a campaign against “woke” and “DEI” — concepts he could not accurately define even if you offered to give him a superyacht (to go with the used jumbo jet the Qatari royal family is trying to unload on him) if he got them right.

So, where are we now? Here are just a few indicators:

1. The number of people killed by police in America has gone up — yes, up — every year since Derek Chauvin took George Floyd’s life in broad daylight on that Minneapolis street.

2. In 2024, police killed Black people at three times the rate they killed white people — a telling statistic essentially unchanged from before George Floyd was murdered.

3. In 2015, just 18 police officers were charged with murder or manslaughter after shooting someone while on duty. In 2024 — despite the supposed reckoning in the wake of George Floyd’s killing — that number went down, to 16.

4. Violence directed at Black and Brown people, women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews — anyone perceived as “other” in a culture forged through centuries of white male Christian dominance — makes the news day in and day out.

Just this past week, the United States Department of Justice — which has been weaponized under the direction of MAGA extremist and Trump sycophant Pam Bondi — abandoned federal investigations or oversight of nearly two dozen police departments with records of egregious misconduct.

That’s part of an overall pattern at the DOJ and throughout the Trump regime.

  • As president, Trump has done more than spout hateful rhetoric. He has deployed government agencies to work actively against upholding civil rights.

  • The Trump/Bondi DOJ is turning civil rights law upside down — not just refusing to enforce the law, but deploying law enforcement tools against organizations that advance civil rights.

  • Hundreds of lawyers and staff have left the storied Civil Rights Division within the DOJ — unwilling to actively work against the cause of civil rights.

  • The DOJ dropped litigation against a voter suppression law in Georgia.

  • DOJ civil rights lawyers are now deployed to investigate and prosecute schools for upholding transgender rights.

  • Meanwhile, corporate and “white collar” crime goes unpunished — an absurd dereliction of duty on the part of law enforcement that the Trump regime is actively worsening.

  • And the serial criminal known as Donald J. Trump — along with members of his family and administration — are engaging in flagrant grift and corruption right out in the open for all to see.

She may not listen, but let’s make sure Pam Bondi — who, as Attorney General of the United States, oversees the Department of Justice and law enforcement agencies all across America — hears us anyway.

To Attorney General Pam Bondi:

Do your job. Reinstate Department of Justice investigations and oversight of police departments with records of racism, brutality, and corruption. Uphold the nation’s civil rights laws. Launch investigations and prosecutions to address the outlandish and embarrassing corporate crime wave that is getting even worse under your watch. And use the power of your office to hold Donald Trump and his confederates accountable for any and all crimes they have committed, are committing, or will undoubtedly commit.

Click to add your name now.

Thanks for taking action.

For justice,

- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen

THE WINS

​The Good News:

Trump withdrew his pick for U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Ed Martin, who defended the actions of Jan. 6 rioters. The president said he will announce a new nominee soon and that Martin will go to the main Justice Department

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/08/trump-ed-martin-nomination-rescinded-us-attorney

Twelve feet tall, Black, bold, and unbothered, that’s how you stop traffic in Times Square.

While bronze white men have loomed over public spaces for centuries, this new statue doesn’t just stand—it redefines.

Artist Thomas J. Price didn’t create a tribute to one woman; he created an embodied shift in power. No sword, no throne just presence. A gaze that doesn’t seek permission. A posture that doesn’t apologize.

She’s not here to fit into history, she’s here to correct it. Nestled between colonial giants, her figure speaks volumes without uttering a word: “I know my worth.” This isn’t just art. This is counter-monumental.

This is Black femininity in full, radiant stature—regal, rooted, and unapologetically unshaken. May every girl who passes by know: you don’t have to shrink to be seen.

#BlackArtMatters #PublicMonumentsReimagined #GroundedInTheStars #ReclaimThePedestal #RepresentationMatters

The U.S. Senate Just Voted to Make Black Wall Street a National Monument - https://bit.ly/3H8qLR0

After decades of advocacy, the Senate has unanimously passed a bill to honor Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District—once known as Black Wall Street—as a national monument.

This comes just days before the 104th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

The bill now heads to the House.

A step toward truth. A step toward justice.

Support journalism that keeps our history alive. 

Subscribe to BWST on Substack – https://bit.ly/4mkmsT1

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#BlackWallStreet #GreenwoodTulsa #NationalMonument #BWST #SupportBlackMedia #BlackWallStreetTimes

Resources & Education

Black Lives Matter Website

"We envision a future fully divested from police, prisons, and all punishment paradigms, a future which invests in justice, joy, and culture."

I'm Still Here: Reese's Book Club: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • From a leading voice on racial justice, an eye-opening account of growing up Black, Christian, and female that exposes how white America’s love affair with “diversity” so often falls short of its ideals.

“Austin Channing Brown introduces herself as a master memoirist. This book will break open hearts and minds.”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed

Austin Channing Brown’s first encounter with a racialized America came at age seven, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools and churches, Austin writes, “I had to learn what it means to love blackness,” a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America’s racial divide as a writer, speaker, and expert helping organizations practice genuine inclusion.

In a time when nearly every institution (schools, churches, universities, businesses) claims to value diversity in its mission statement, Austin writes in breathtaking detail about her journey to self-worth and the pitfalls that kill our attempts at racial justice. Her stories bear witness to the complexity of America’s social fabric—from Black Cleveland neighborhoods to private schools in the middle-class suburbs, from prison walls to the boardrooms at majority-white organizations.

For readers who have engaged with America’s legacy on race through the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michael Eric Dyson, I’m Still Here is an illuminating look at how white, middle-class, Evangelicalism has participated in an era of rising racial hostility, inviting the reader to confront apathy, recognize God’s ongoing work in the world, and discover how blackness—if we let it—can save us all.

Curriculum Resource Guide

BLM at School is committed to teaching truthful histories and amassing the powerful practices, creative tools, and key strategies by which past, present, and future generations can advance the struggle of Black liberation. Summer 2022, we renewed our curriculum work to create a more process-oriented, dialogic, secure, and empowering space for curriculum and community-building. Introducing...Curriculum Resource Guide 2.0

LibGuides: Black Lives Matter: Teaching Resources: K-12

Making sense of Black Lives Matter and the Black Experience in the United States.

Links to suggested lessons, films, books, readings, and general teaching guides for Black Lives Matter at School

Scene on Radio: Seeing White a semi distilled version (unintentionally) of the brilliant book The People's History of the United States

Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story.

Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

Viewpoint: Why racism in US is worse than in Europe

News stories emerge almost daily in the US about police being called over black Americans doing nothing more than being black. Writer Barrett Holmes Pitner explains why he thinks American racism is unique.

Allow Me To Introduce You To Goddess Mia

My dear readers, this woman is where I, as a white woman of a bit of privilege learned a to be a better advocate for POC, and particularly WOC.

She taught me to look at things such as the current protests from very different viewpoints than I have in the past. This also led me to look at the reality of what it means to be an ally for POC.

Many of out black sisters are sitting this fight out. Why? Because they have been there, done that, then watched as white women moved in droves like flies to the call of Donald Trump. Many white women voted for Donald Trump.

And as I have watched what DJT is doing to DEI initiatives and now watching as he systematically works toward erasing Black History and the celebration of POC, and undermines at every opportunity safeguards in place for the Black community.

NO it is indeed NOT safe for people of color to protest and demonstrate.

We have already seen what protesting, writing op-eds and demonstrating for their beliefs and rights in a supposed free speech America has gotten other races recently.

I digress.
Goddess Mia gives it to you straight up, no sugar coating needed. If you follow her and listen to what she has to say, you will understand the Black perspective as a whole, much better.

She will tell you exactly how to be a better ally and exactly how even, white women's allyship has failed them in the (even current) past.

A Sampling Of Her Content Below
 

Her Links
 

ARTICLES

RESOURCES FOR POC & ALLIES

Allyship

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Allyship Opportunities For Persons With Priviledge

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Books On How To Be An Ally

  • Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools, 2nd Edition (2015) Glenn Singleton

  • Race Amity: A Primer on America’s Other Tradition, Natl Center for Race Amity

  • White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism, Paula Rothenberg

  • Woke Church: An Urgent Call for Christians in America to Confront Racism and Injustice, Eric Mason

  • White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Robin DiAngelo

  • On the Other Side of Freedom by DeRay Mckesson

  • Privilege: Power and Difference, Allan Johnson

  • Privilege: A Reader, Michael Kimmel & Abby Ferber

  • Raising Race Questions, Ali Michael

  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander

  • Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson

  • America’s Original Sin: America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America, Jim Wallis

  • Slavery By Another Name, Douglas Blackmon

  • When Affirmative Action Was White, Ira Katznelson

  • So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo

  • The Color of Law: The Forgotten Story of How Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein

  • Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Ibram X. Kendi

  • How to be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi

  • White Awake: An Honest Look at What it Means to be White, Daniel Hill

  • Empire of Cotton: A Global History, Sven Beckert

  • Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman

  • The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, Calvin Schermerhorn

  • The History of White People, Nell Irvin Painter

  • Excerpt from Privilege, Power and Difference

  • A Freedom Bought With Blood

Books On BIAS

  • Awareness Reduces Racial Bias by Devin G. Pope, Joseph Price, Justin Wolfers

    Can raising awareness of racial bias subsequently reduce that bias? We address this question by exploiting the widespread media attention highlighting racial bias among professional basketball referees that occurred in May 2007 following the release of an academic study. Using new data, we confirm that racial bias persisted in the years after the study's original sample, but prior to the media coverage. Subsequent to the media coverage though, the bias completely disappeared. We examine potential mechanisms that may have produced this result and find that the most likely explanation is that upon becoming aware of their biases, individual referees changed their decision-making process. These results suggest that raising awareness of even subtle forms of bias can bring about meaningful change

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  • Biased: uncovering the hidden prejudice that shapes what we see, think, and do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

    ISBN: 9780735224933

    Publication Date: 2019-03-26

    "Poignant....important and illuminating."--The New York Times Book Review "Groundbreaking."--Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy From one of the world's leading experts on unconscious racial bias come stories, science, and strategies to address one of the central controversies of our time How do we talk about bias? How do we address racial disparities and inequities? What role do our institutions play in creating, maintaining, and magnifying those inequities? What role do we play? With a perspective that is at once scientific, investigative, and informed by personal experience, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt offers us the language and courage we need to face one of the biggest and most troubling issues of our time. She exposes racial bias at all levels of society--in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and criminal justice system. Yet she also offers us tools to address it. Eberhardt shows us how we can be vulnerable to bias but not doomed to live under its grip. Racial bias is a problem that we all have a role to play in solving..

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Call Number: LANGSAM Stacks E185.625 .C646 2014

ISBN: 9780415517744

Publication Date: 2013-12-13

Anchored with historical chapters that show how the influence and legacy of slavery have shaped the treatment of skin color in American society, the contributors to this volume bring to light the ways in which colorism affects us all--influencing what we wear, who we see on television, and even which child we might pick to adopt. Sure to be an eye-opening collection for anyone curious about how race and color continue to affect society, Color Matters provides students of race in America with wide-ranging overview of a crucial topic.

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  • Diversity Beyond Lip Service: a coaching guide for challenging bias by La'Wana Harris; Khalil Smith (Foreword by)

    ISBN: 9781523098675

    Publication Date: 2019-05-28

    The elephant in the room with diversity work is that people with privilege must use it to allow others equal access to power. This is often why diversity efforts falter--people believe in diversity until they feel that they have to give something up. How do we talk them through this shift? La'Wana Harris introduces Inclusion Coaching, a new tool based on cutting-edge research that identifies the stages of preparation, implementation, and "self-work" necessary to help individuals, teams, and organizations build a sustainable culture of inclusion. Harris's six-stage COMMIT model--Commit to courageous action, Open your eyes and ears, Move beyond lip service, Make room for controversy and conflict, Invite new perspectives, and Tell the truth even when it hurts--provides a proven process for making people aware of their own conscious and unconscious biases and concrete steps to make inclusion an embedded reality

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  • Of Fear and Strangers: a history of xenophobia by George Makari

    Call Number: LANGSAM Cohen GN496 .M35 2021

    ISBN: 9780393652000

    Publication Date: 2021-09-14

    A startling work of historical sleuthing and synthesis, Of Fear and Strangers reveals the forgotten histories of xenophobia--and what they mean for us today. By 2016, it was impossible to ignore an international resurgence of xenophobia. What had happened? Looking for clues, psychiatrist and historian George Makari started out in search of the idea's origins. To his astonishment, he discovered an unfolding series of never-told stories. While a fear and hatred of strangers may be ancient, he found that the notion of a dangerous bias called "xenophobia" arose not so long ago. Coined by late-nineteenth-century doctors and political commentators and popularized by an eccentric stenographer, xenophobia emerged alongside Western nationalism, colonialism, mass migration, and genocide. Makari chronicles the concept's rise, from its popularization and perverse misuse to its spread as an ethical principle in the wake of a series of calamites that culminated in the Holocaust, and its sudden reappearance in the twenty-first century. He investigates xenophobia's evolution through the writings of figures such as Joseph Conrad, Albert Camus, and Richard Wright, and innovators like Walter Lippmann, Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Frantz Fanon. Weaving together history, philosophy, and psychology, Makari offers insights into varied, related ideas such as the conditioned response, the stereotype, projection, the Authoritarian Personality, the Other, and institutional bias. Masterful, original, and elegantly written, Of Fear and Strangers offers us a unifying paradigm by which we might more clearly comprehend how irrational anxiety and contests over identity sweep up groups and lead to the dark headlines of division so prevalent today.

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  • Race on the Brain by Jonathan Kahn

    ISBN: 9780231545389

    Publication Date: 2018-07-31

    Jonathan Kahn argues that an uncritical embrace of implicit bias, to the exclusion of power relations and structural racism, undermines wider civic responsibility for addressing racial inequality by turning it over to experts. Race on the Brain challenges us to engage more democratically in the difficult task of promoting racial justice.

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#sametruth

And Written By:

J. David McSwane

I write about national issues, including everything from health care to business to civil rights issues.

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