"I Guess I'm an Ally?": Examining the Digital Participation and Qualifications of "White Allies" in Collaboration with r/Blackpeopletwitter

Background and Purpose: Following George Floyd’s murder on May 25th, 2020, many white Americans attended racial justice demonstrations, joined anti-racist book clubs, and displayed shifts in their beliefs around police violence and racism (Harmon & Burch, 2020)—despite these shifts being short-lived (Thomas & Horowitz, 2020). While 75% of white Americans report that their networks are entirely white (Cox, Navarro-Rivera, & Jones, 2016) and still live in mostly white neighborhoods (Frey, 2022), some white people sought out participation and membership in Black communities online to learn about and discuss racism beyond their ideologically insulated lives. This oral paper presentation focuses on one example of this phenomenon to examine normative interiorities of whiteness in the context of a digital Black counterpublic and enclave. As white people continue to seek out digital contexts for sociopolitical engagement, this paper offers conceptual and empirical insights into the digital practices of normative whiteness.

Methods: Leveraging data collected during an ongoing community collaboration (2020 - present) with moderators of the subreddit, r/BlackPeopleTwitter (a digital Black community with a user verification process for "white allies"), I examine two main questions about self-identifying white allies applying for verification: 1) What are their expressed reasons for applying and 2) What are their expressed ally qualifications? I use qualitative content analysis (QCA) to analyze 5,436 initial direct messages sent to moderators by self-identifying white users between November 2019 and November 2020. Although moderators only ask for a message stating they are a white ally, users rarely follow these directions. Unprompted, they share life stories, reasons for applying, ally credentials and much more.

Results: Preliminary analysis found that users gave eight main reasons for applying: 1) the ability to comment 2) learning/growth, 3) helping/supporting, 4) like-minded community, 6) external recognition, 7) distancing themselves from whiteness/racism, 8) solidarity with Black people, and 9) the current moment. Analysis also found that ally qualifications organize into seven main categories: 1) internal abstractions (beliefs, emotions, eduction, and personal character) 2) external actions (protests, donations, and work/profession), 3) disconnections from whiteness (cultural, interpersonal/relational, temporal, and racism), 4) connections to Blackness (friends, family, children, romantic, neighborhood, culture, and work/profession), 5) testifying (to relationship with whiteness, white privilege, never knowing Black experiences, and their real identity), 6) Reddit participation, and 7) Solidarity.

Conclusion: This research presents evidence that social media contain consequential contexts for examining people as they engage in normative practices of whiteness, as well as the ways that white logics may be rearticulated during attempts at and performances of “white allyhood.” The normative displays of white interiority evident in this research are well represented in the current iterations of social work research, practice, and education, as well as the encroachment of whiteness and white people on Black enclaves and counterpublics at the expense of Black safety and wellbeing. Furthermore, this research highlights a pressing need for spaces—digital or otherwise—in which white people can begin to practice relationships, belonging, intimacy, and life beyond reconciliation with whiteness.