In a series of focus groups, seven community leaders including Black, Indigenous, and racialized people outlined their expectations of white men aspiring to allyship. Together, we synthesized these insights into three themes: (1) Resisting oppression: white men need to first understand that oppression is urgent, everywhere, and often invisible and taken-for-granted by white men; (2) Constructing white men: community leaders took the “power to define” and defined whiteness as a structural system, how white men are created by these systems, and the challenges this creates for white men aspiring to allyship; and (3) Expectations of white men seeking allyship to undo, learn & listen, commit, and act. The series is meant as a resource for social justice groups to share with white men seeking allyship, and for white men seeking allyship to process and reflect on how they may show up in these spaces.
Co-Authors: Jeff Halvorsen, Pam Beebe, Lemlem Haile, Omer Jamal, Fanny Oliphant, Abbas Mancey, Kamal Sehgal, Adrian Wolfleg, & Liza Lorenzetti.
Suggested Citation: Halvorsen, J., Beebe, P., Haile, L., Jamal, O., Oliphant, F., Mancey, A., Sehgal, K., Wolfleg, A., & Lorenzetti, L., (2023). Community Leaders Perspectives on White Men’s Allyship: Infographic Series. University of Calgary, Faculty of Social Work.