Becoming Trustworthy White Allies

Minister Morrison (Letters from Old Screamer Mountain) provides a thoughtful and intimate guide to dismantling systemic racism. Drawing from decades of antiracist learning—including her founding of the Doing Our Own Work retreat—she characterizes allyship as a role defined by lifelong action. The process begins with the deep inner work of tackling one’s “racist legacy of obliviousness,” including researching “how race and class were at play” in the lives of one’s ancestors. Such analysis, she writes, brings one’s own “structural privilege” into sharp relief while clarifying how one’s actions can shape future generations. With this grounding, readers can fight racism in small-scale, local ways, like calling out bigoted comments from friends, family, or coworkers (“The violence of demeaning speech... is normalized by silence and assent”) or spearheading initiatives against efforts to suppress marginalized voices, including bans on books about the history of Indigenous dispossession or slavery. Throughout, the author’s emphasis on historical reckoning encourages readers to form a deeper foundation from which to do their antiracist work while avoiding performative allyship and white fragility. The result is a bracing and uplifting invitation for white people to become “agents of change.” (Sept.)