This is How You Become a Better White Ally

In my short career as a journalist, I’ve already encountered situations when I felt that newsrooms and their leaders have failed me. I’m Filipino and white, but when I’ve tried to talk to management about race or racism, my efforts feel ineffective. So when I saw Moiz Syed’s guide on how to be a better ally to people of color in the newsroom, I was impressed by its honesty and integrity. It said the things I wanted to say.

Syed, a data journalist and developer at ProPublica, asked 50 or so journalists of color how white journalists can be better allies. His guide breaks down white allyship into four “levels.” Here are just a few of the recommendations:

Work on yourself – Expand your social circles and have non-white friends. Educate yourself and read work by people of color. Acknowledge how you’ve benefited from racism. Know how to take criticism and apologize.
Listen and share information – Listen and believe people of color. Create space for them in the workplace and be transparent with them.
Support the work and voices of people of color – Express solidarity in public (not just one-on-one). Give people of color credit and recommend them for opportunities.
Take direct action – Speak up in white spaces. Do the unglamorous diversity work. Make room for people of color by stepping down or pushing for an alternative management structure.

Syed told me he was surprised by the universality of the experiences that people shared in their survey responses. It was just one question, but some people poured their hearts out. He also found common threads and patterns in the way that white managers apply their power.

Some of the quotes Syed included from the survey are pretty pointed. One person remarked, “Honestly, white people should not be allowed to work in newsrooms if they don't have a single non-white friend. It's disqualifying.” The guide is blunt and doesn’t try to soften the discomfort white allies may experience in leveraging or giving up their power to be an ally. It acknowledges that white people must reallocate and even relinquish some of their power in order to level the playing field.

Syed made the guide for a panel at the NICAR 2020 Conference in New Orleans earlier this month. He said that he was unsure when approached to do the panel, feeling that white people should be the ones teaching each other how to be better allies. But he took the opportunity to get white people talking about allyship, and to share the experiences of journalists of color. He tried to make the guide applicable beyond journalism and believes it overlaps with the problems people of color face in other industries.

“It would be amazing to survey people of color across industries and see how they feel. I would love to survey people of color who work in tech, who don’t have well-paying jobs in industries, and I think you would hear a lot of similar, broader issues. But I think the examples you would gather would bring those points home for other people,” Syed said. “Gathering examples like that is a good exercise to do, because it makes it real for people.”