WORD ON THE STREET: How could White people be better allies to the Black community?

In the midst of the ongoing calls for racial justice and reconciliation following the police killing of George Floyd and the protests and unrest that followed, the MSR took to the streets to ask community members their thoughts on how White people could be strong allies to the Black community?

Question: How could White people be better allies to the Black community?

Thanks for asking that question; I think what they can do to become allies in our community is to come with a willing heart and willing to listen and fall behind whatever we want done in our community. Sometimes White people come in with their own agendas and their own outlook on what and how things should be in our community. That’s not how you do it; they need to come in with an ear to hear and a hand to help!

Alfonzo

My husband would say he hates the word “ally.” He wishes people should stop using it because we are all fellow Americans. We should be considered American brothers and sisters—all of us together.

From my prospective, what I think Whites can do is get to know people in the Black community, form relationships and understand where we are coming from as a people and the actual traumas we’ve had.

Let’s accept our differences but also let’s connect with what we have that is alike, such as kids, jobs, family, parents and life experiences, respecting and understanding those perspectives, can help us go a long way.

Dr. Rahshana Price-Isuk MD

If White people want to be allies to the Black community, first they need to accept the fact that nothing that we have or that we live in was created for us to prosper. As long as they ignore the fact that the entire foundation of this country was made off Black people’s back they cannot be an ally. We have never had the opportunity to receive kickbacks from that labor or prosper as a whole. The laws were created
without us in thought, white people still dictate what we can and cannot do or get.

We have to accept privileges that exist for White people, do not exist for Black people. The quicker White people acknowledge that everything we have was created for them. Blacks were supposed to just live in it not with it. Once that is acknowledged, it literally can open the door to everything that can be solved. First
we have to acknowledge that none of this was created for Black people.

Dawn

Robert Cush

Nothing! We have to take care of our own first. They can’t help us. That’s it!

Alicia

They need to stop forcing to understand what they don’t understand. White people portray that they understand when they really don’t have a clue. Let us as Black people have our moment because we never get to have that moment.

Ben Glover

Just listen and have a listening ear to whatever black people are trying to say and pay attention and don’t be gullible to the obvious. Some white people need to stay out their way cause some white people are mainly in the way. For the most part pay attention, listen, and don’t be gullible.