How to be a good ally

I’ve seen a lot of articles about good allyship that all mention roughly the same things: following the leadership of marginalized folks, doing your own research, and calling out injustice when you see it. (If you do want a refresher in some allyship basics, you can check out this short but great article on how to be a good ally.) Those are all absolutely integral parts of being a good ally, but I’ve noticed that there are crucial allyship skills that pretty much all good allies do, but nobody ever talks about. So I’m going to talk about those here.

Editing yourself: Some people have the belief that emotional closeness means sharing every thought that comes through your head. If you’d like to be an ally, though, it’s helpful to be willing to edit yourself as you talk.

We all have internalized bias. And it’s natural to have thoughts pop up that betray that bias. So if we want to protect marginalized folks from our existing bias, we’ll need to do some internal editing from time to time. That means sometimes, you’ll have a joke come to mind that you might decide to leave unsaid. Or you may have a burning question you’re dying to hear the answer to, but you might realize that question would hurt for someone else to hear, so you end up not asking it.

Of course, it’s incredibly helpful to investigate your biases and reduce the number of biased thoughts that come up in general. When a biased thought comes up, it’s a great opportunity to question where that thought is coming from and work on addressing the root causes of those thoughts.

But no matter how much work you do, you’re still likely to have biased thoughts come up from time to time, so you’re likely to need to do some internal editing from time to time.

Good allies know that just because you do some internal editing sometimes doesn’t mean you’re any less close to someone; it means that you care enough about that person’s wellbeing to adjust your behavior accordingly. And that’s something to really celebrate.
Abiding by the emotional right-of-way. Good allies know that sometimes, they’ll temporarily have to put aside their own pain in order to assist those experiencing greater pain. If you want more specific tips on how to do that and what that looks like, you can check out our article on what we call the emotional right-of-way.

The short of it is that pain tends to heal most effectively if the person with the greater pain expresses their feelings first. This comes up a lot in allyship; for example, if you’re experiencing the pain of embarrassment from having mispronounced someone’s name, and that person is experiencing the pain of feeling like they don’t belong when they hear their name mispronounced, it might be best for you to prioritize the needs of the other person (which could look like quickly apologizing and then moving the conversation along), and to find a different place to help you feel heard about your embarrassment— be it through a therapist, a friend, or journaling.
Getting good at apologizing. Good allies know that nobody is a perfect ally. You are always going to inadvertently hurt systemically oppressed folks from time to time. A worthy goal is to minimize the amount and frequency of that hurt, but for as long as you are interacting with other humans in the world, you are going to hurt people on occasion. So it’s absolutely crucial to develop your apologizing skills so that you can minimize that hurt.
We came up with the ultimate template for apologizing, which includes a section about how to apologize for unintentional microaggressions. If you haven’t yet, check that out for a step-by-step breakdown of how to apologize while still centering the other person. Because if you are inadvertently centering yourself in your apologies, you may be creating more hurt unnecessarily.
Practicing relentless self-compassion. Good allies offer themselves self-compassion no matter how badly they’ve messed up. They know that the most effective way to make allyship emotionally sustainable is to avoid beating themselves up (when possible, that is— and having self-compassion when they do accidentally beat themselves up).

It’s a very human thing to feel pain when you cause someone else pain. And that empathetic pain can help you know when you want to adjust your behavior to avoid hurting other people. So it’s a good thing!

But human have a tendency to disproportionately focus on the negative, so we often need a little extra help to come back to our emotional baseline after we’ve hurt someone. That’s where self-compassion comes in. If you can have compassion for yourself no matter what, you can bounce back from hurting someone without degrading your self-worth. And that’s a great way to make sure you can be a solid ally in the long run.
For some concrete tips on how to have self-compassion, even under difficult circumstances, we recommend reading up here.

This is by no means a full guide to everything you can do to be a good ally, but I hope it’s helpful to learn about some strategies that you might not have found elsewhere. And please remember as you try these that nobody is a perfect ally— if any of these feel challenging, it doesn’t mean you’re doing a bad job. It just means that being an ally is a lifelong process that can feel easier over time, and you’re doing a great job persisting.