Can White Allies Rescue Themselves From White Supremacy?

The day after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election to Donald Trump, lots of white folks showed up on Howard University's campus for her concession speech. Black folks joked that they’d never seen that many white folks on an HBCU campus like ever. But what really struck me was looking out at the crowd and seeing so many white women crying and clutching each other like lifelines.

Their tears weren’t just grief over losing an election. They were an unspoken acknowledgment of what they saw coming. A recognition that the façade had cracked. That the country they believed they controlled, the democracy they thought was stable, was slipping out of their hands. They knew, on some level, that they had no real power to stop what was about to happen.

I remember watching them and thinking, “Hmmm. They’re scared as hell. What do they know?”

Months later, it’s all clear. They were right to be afraid. And they were right about their own helplessness.

Let’s keep it real: white “allies” in this political moment look painfully outmatched and paralyzed, despite the moral urgency and the historical precedent warning us exactly where unchecked fascism and white supremacist backlash lead.

The rise of white authoritarianism, the attacks on reproductive rights, voting rights, education, free expression, the mainstreaming of conspiracy and fascist rhetoric, is being driven by white people, in white institutions, with white voters consistently empowering it. And most white allies can’t even persuade their own families, churches, or communities to stop.

It lays bare the limits of allyship as many practice it. For all the hashtags, book clubs, and declarations that they’re “learning” and promising to “do better,” very few are willing to sacrifice comfort, risk relationships, or materially disrupt the systems that advantage them. Even when they do try, they often lack the social power to shift the cultural tide in their own networks, where this fascism festers.

How can they possibly stand up for Black and brown lives when they can’t even stop their own people from building the machinery of oppression?

That’s not to say there are no white people resisting, organizing, or fighting bravely because there are. But collectively, they’re failing. That failure doesn’t just expose the weakness of liberal ally culture or the depth of the rot in the institutions they thought they could reform, it also reveals their ongoing denial about how ruthless and committed white supremacy really is.

This is exactly why so many Black folks get deeply irked—sometimes outright fed up—with the performance of white allyship. Because when the rubber meets the road, that solidarity often proves thin.

It’s frustrating watching so many white allies want credit for being “good” without doing the messy, risky work of fighting white supremacy in the spaces where they actually have influence. They want to stand with us in public but won’t sacrifice in private. They want praise for empathy while refusing to dismantle the systems that benefit them. And when things get scary, as they are right now, they retreat, fall silent, or wring their hands in helplessness, asking us what they should do instead of taking responsibility.

We see all of it.

And it’s infuriating. Because we don’t have the luxury of opting out when it gets hard. We can’t just hope fascism loses. We know survival demands commitment, risk, and real action. And we expect so-called allies to step up—not just talk about it.

Black people have always known white supremacy is a threat. It has never stopped being one. Now it’s threatening them too, openly, aggressively, in ways they can’t ignore or comfortably outsource anymore. And so many white “allies” are flailing, making statements, posting memes, feeling bad, but doing little to disrupt the actual social bonds and institutions that keep this system thriving.

They want credit for “doing the work,” but when it’s time to confront their racist uncle, vote in every election, withhold their labor, risk their jobs, face social exile, put their bodies on the line, they balk. They want to be on the right side of history without paying any price.

Meanwhile Black people and other marginalized communities have had to strategize, survive, and resist without allies forever. We don’t have the luxury of retreating from the fight. We see the existential threat clearly. Watching people with so much power, access, and cultural sway squander it, or pretend they’re powerless, is exhausting.

It’s not just that allyship is often hollow. It so often amounts to asking Black people to feel grateful for intentions that don’t deliver real outcomes, even for their own damn future.

And if you want proof that good intentions mean nothing without power, courage, and commitment, just look at what’s happened this year.

Since January 2025, Trump has slashed federal abortion funding and protections, ramped up ICE raids and deportations, abandoned DOJ enforcement of voting rights, canceled LGBTQ+ protections, and gutted federal DEI programs. He’s encouraged sweeping book bans, threatened and defunded higher education for “bias,” expanded censorship in K–12 schools, and stacked federal agencies with loyalists while purging civil servants. He’s boosted ICE and Border Patrol budgets, rolled back environmental protections, sabotaged federal agencies, and normalized open fascist rhetoric from the bully pulpit, all in broad daylight while white “allies” have barely lifted a finger to stop it.

White allies love to call this an “unprecedented” crisis, but Black, Indigenous, immigrant, queer, disabled, and working-class people know it isn’t new. What is new is that it’s so overt, so fast-moving, so impossible to spin as “just politics as usual.”

And yet the typical white ally response? Book clubs. Tweets. No real organizing. Endless statements of heartbreak.

Black folks see through it because we’ve always known: you can’t vote away fascism once it’s emboldened. You have to disrupt it, sabotage it, make it ungovernable. And so far? White allies can’t even save themselves from it, let alone the rest of us.

They seem so helpless right now for a few core reasons and none of them are flattering, but all of them real.

First, they don’t really understand the depth or nature of white supremacy. Even the well-intentioned think it’s about personal prejudice or ignorance or something you fix with education or empathy. They don’t grasp that it’s a system that rewards them, that’s adaptable, that doesn’t even need their conscious participation to keep working.

Second, they’re in denial about the evil they’re up against, especially in their own families and communities. Many would rather insist “this isn’t who we are” than face the truth that this is exactly who a critical mass of their people want to be. Confronting that means risking comfort and social bonds most aren’t willing to lose.

They cling to the myth of progress and the comforting idea that America is always moving forward, getting better, becoming more just. But they’ve never been on the receiving end of sadistic white supremacist violence or policies designed to grind you down and leave you dead. Confronting the reality that so many of their neighbors and relatives would sign up for that violence, or look away from it, means risking comfort, stability, and relationships most aren’t willing to lose.

And part of that fear comes from the way so many white allies still see racists as redeemable rather than as an EVIL that needs to be purged from their communities. They want to believe every bigot is just misinformed or ignorant, someone who can be educated, reasoned with, gently guided back to decency. It’s comforting to think that with enough conversation or empathy, you can win them over.

But that mindset is itself a luxury. It’s the luxury of never having been the direct target of that hate, never having your safety, freedom, or life depend on someone else’s “change of heart.” Black people, Indigenous people, immigrants, queer and trans folks know that some people are committed to our destruction. We don’t have the option to sentimentalize them or wait for them to see the light.

White allies often can’t face that some of their own people are beyond persuasion and that real safety requires confronting, isolating, and removing those people from positions of power and influence. That it might mean shunning family members, losing friends, blowing up careers, or tearing apart the communities they love.

So instead, they cling to the hope of redemption, even when it’s clear these folks are organizing to destroy all of us, including them. And that refusal to see the danger for what it is, to treat it with the urgency it deserves, is part of why their “resistance” stays so impotent.

Third, they’ve never built the muscle for real risk. Marginalized groups have always had to organize and strategize under threat. We’ve had no choice but to know how to move quietly, build networks, share resources, protect each other, and stay ready for retaliation. We understand that survival has always demanded sacrifice, courage, and collective discipline.

But many white allies think showing up means posting online, attending a march, or making a donation when it’s popular. They’re used to activism that feels safe, social, even performative, something you can do without real consequences. When the stakes rise, when it means putting bodies on the line, risking arrest, losing jobs, alienating family, forfeiting privilege, or even losing your life—they freeze. Because they were never taught to see themselves as people who might have to fight, suffer, or sacrifice to do what's right.

Fourth, many don’t actually want to give anything up. Their comfort, safety, property values, jobs, and social standing all depend on maintaining a racist status quo. Even if they oppose the worst abuses in theory, they’re rarely willing to pay the price to dismantle the systems that benefit them.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, white allies are afraid!

For the first time in generations, they’re realizing they’re targets too. But that realization hasn’t radicalized them into effective resistance, it’s paralyzed them. Because deep down, they never truly believed it could happen to them. And they don’t know how to fight other white people.

They’ve been socialized their whole lives to maintain harmony with other white folks, to avoid conflict, to keep the peace at family dinners, church meetings, and in their neighborhoods. They’ve learned to see other white people, even the openly racist ones, as people who can be reasoned with, debated, persuaded gently. The idea of having to confront them directly, to burn bridges, to risk alienation or social exile is foreign and terrifying.

It’s one thing to critique “the system” in the abstract but it’s another to see your own relatives, neighbors, and colleagues as willing foot soldiers of that system. Many white allies can’t or won’t do that. They can’t bring themselves to see that their responsibility isn’t just to call out injustice generally, but to fight the very people they grew up with, the communities that raised them, the culture that comforts them.

And until they can do that, until they’re willing to see those connections clearly and break them when necessary, they’ll remain stuck. Afraid. Ineffective. Watching fascism grow right in their own living rooms.

They’re not powerless because they lack numbers or resources. They’re powerless because they lack the will, the clarity, and the courage to confront the reality they helped build.

And it’s not that white people don’t have any radical tradition to draw on. They do. There’s a real history of white folks who broke with their communities, risked everything, and fought alongside Black, Indigenous, immigrant, queer, and working-class movements. Abolitionists who defied family and church. John Brown led an armed revolt against slavery. Labor organizers who shut down factories and ports. Freedom Riders who got beaten and jailed.

The Molly Maguires used arson and assassination to resist brutal bosses. The Wobblies sabotaged company property. The Weather Underground bombed government buildings to protest imperialism and racism. Anti-fascists in the 1930s brawled with Nazis in American streets, while volunteers in the Spanish Civil War fought fascism with rifles. Even today, Antifa networks confront white supremacists head-on.

There’s a lineage of white people willing to risk everything and use force to fight oppression. But too many white allies today don’t see themselves in that lineage. They want to inherit the moral glow without doing the dangerous work. They treat those figures like museum exhibits, heroic but distant, rather than blueprints for what they need to do right now.

Because if they did claim that radical tradition honestly, it would demand they sacrifice comfort, break with polite society, confront their own people fiercely, and risk real consequences. It would mean they couldn’t just be “allies” when it’s easy, but would have to be accomplices in the fight, willing to disrupt, sabotage, and help bring the whole machinery of oppression to a halt.

That tradition exists. But it’s up to them to claim it. And so far most won’t. And the consequences of that hesitation, that sentimental optimism, fall squarely on the rest of us. Their inaction doesn’t just cost them some moral high ground, it costs us our safety, our freedom, our lives. That’s the real price of white fear, denial, and refusal to fight their own.

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