We have no allies. They don’t exist for Black women.

Three days ago, I wrote a Facebook post highlighting a pro tip regarding allyship — specifically around the way that white women, most men, and sometimes even other Black women show up for us.

Pro-Tip surrounding exceptional allyship:

If I come to you with gossip about someone I used to think highly of, because I know you don’t like them; keep me at bay instead of being relieved that someone else finally “sees” your frustration. Let me explain why:

I will use the information I have about your opp to build a fake rapport with you, and even have you believing that I’m actually in your corner because you have the better analysis/platform/presentation/aesthetic — albeit I’m only providing conditional support — you won’t be able to tell boo, because you’re too busy saving the world or whatever it is you think you do.

I need as much dirt on Black women that I can get, so I can later explain why I don’t financially, physically or mentally support them.

Pop Quiz: Who am I? Another Black woman, a white woman or a man? There are no wrong answers.

It may have landed funnily with some folks, so I apologize my hypothetical pop quiz — I’m trying to talk at people less.

If you have the time in the next couple of days, I would love to hear y’all’s thoughts on the matter. Many comments sent out to me, but the one that I was pleasantly surprised to read was from Masada who shared the following:

Black women have no allies because our existence is fundamentally inconvenient to the systems and individuals who claim to support us.

Allyship, when extended to us, is often conditional, performative, and ultimately self-serving. We are expected to be the backbone of every movement, the foot soldiers for every cause, and the emotional mules for every injustice — — yet, when we need reciprocity, protection, or even basic human regard, we are met with silence, abandonment, or outright hostility.

White feminism has historically sidelined black women demanding our labor but refusing to center our specific struggles. From the suffrage movement, which excluded black women while benefiting from our activism, to modern mainstream feminism, which prioritizes issues that largely benefit white, middle class women.

Black women are only valued when we serve the agenda — not when we demand justice for ourselves.

While we are expected to be the nurturers, the defenders, and the ever loyal supporters of black men and black institutions, we rarely receive the same unwavering protection in return.

Misogynoir is alive and well, and too often, our pain is dismissed, our concerns belittled, and our agency undermined by the very people who expect our unconditional support.

The progressive movement uses us — we mobilize for civil rights, carry the Democratic Party on our backs, and stand at the forefront of LGBTQ rights, climate justice, and other countless progressive causes.

But when it comes time for these movements to center to our needs — whether is protecting black maternal health, addressing inequities, stopping the criminalization of black girls — suddenly the solidarity evaporates.

White liberals want gratitude and not accountability. Many of our so-called allies, especially white liberals, want to be celebrated for doing the bare minimum.

They post Black Lives Matter hashtags, buy books on anti-racism, pat themselves on the back for recognizing our oppression, but the moment we demand more — structural changes, reparations, true power sharing they recoil. We’re supposed to be grateful for their crumbs of recognition rather than insist on true equity.

Black women exist at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression. We are too black for mainstream feminism, too woman for racial justice movements, too radical for liberal white allies, and too outspoken in conservative respectability politics.

We are expected to shrink ourselves, to make our demands palatable, to always be the “strong black woman” even as the archetype erases our suffering and dehumanizes us.

The reality is we are in the storm alone because no one benefits from our true liberation but us.

Read that again — no one benefits from our true liberation but us.

If Black women were truly free — if we had economic power, political influence, and social autonomy the entire system would shift in ways that make many of our so-called allys uncomfortable.

They don’t want us to burn the table down; they just want us to be happy sitting quietly at the kiddie table.

We don’t have allies. We never had them & we never will.

- Masada Sarid Ari

Masada Sarid Ari is a Black, Jewish, Queer, Neurodivergent, Criminal Defense death penalty attorney who loves ALL things horological.