Hello you gorgeous individuals, it's Kav here and today I'm going to be talking
about a topic that I've wanted to discuss on my channel for a long time,
but have been trying to figure out the right words to say, so that they came out
the way I wanted them to and basically I'm gonna sum this up by saying "how to
be an ally." First of all, I should acknowledge the fact that - yes my
background is really bare. I am filming on my bed and I'm currently in the
process of redecorating my room which is why my walls have absolutely nothing on
them because we took it all down so that I can redecorate. So, first of all, I'm
going to say that all of the stuff I talk about in this video, I have messed
up on it. I'm not saying that I'm the epitome of the perfect ally or the
perfect diverse booktuber. I've messed up on all of the stuff, but this is just
what I've learned from my time in the community and what I now think is good
allyship. I don't speak for everyone - all diverse people are not a monolith, so
I'm not speaking for everyone. I'm speaking for myself and from my
experiences in the community and this is what my experiences this past year and a
half have taught me. There are three main points I want to cover and the first
point is boosting and supporting marginalized people. I feel like this is
the easiest of the three which is why I'm just getting out of the way in the
beginning because it's so easy to boost and support people. We are lucky in this
book community to have such a wide range of people to support. We get to form
personal connections with readers with booktubers with book bloggers with
authors, agents, publishers with so many different people involved in the process
of making and supporting and reviewing books and I just think that that is so
cool that we have that ability and I think that's something that's really
important with our privilege to have that ability is to make sure that we're
supporting and boosting the people who don't necessarily get the same platform
as privileged people. I think that to do this, one of the first things we have to
do is start to dismantle the us-versus-them culture because I've seen
that it's very prevalent in our community and I think it does have some
issues. As long as we continue treating marginalized people and privileged people
as two completely different things we're not gonna get anywhere
because you can be, I guess, 100% privileged, but most people are in the
middle of that. Most people are like a white woman, so you have white privilege,
but you don't have gender privilege or you might be like a straight person of
color, so you have straight privilege, but not skin color privilege or whatever, so
most people aren't on one end of the spectrum, so I think that as long as we
have this us-versus-them culture we're not gonna get anywhere because there is
no us-and-them because everyone is somewhere different on the spectrum and of course,
again, you can be on either side of the spectrum, but in general people are
somewhere in the middle and to boost and support diverse people or marginalized
people I think the important thing is to look at your following and look at who
you're supporting. If you're supporting every one of just one skin color or just
one gender or something - first of all, you're not even getting that many
opinions and you're not getting that many people to discuss with which makes
your experience not as fun and not as interesting because having different
people to talk to and having different individuals, not just like different
diversities, but different individuals actually to talk to is so cool and
I think that that has really improved my experience in the book community since
I started boosting marginalized people. It's really easy - you can retweet their
channel, retweet their blog - it's really not a very difficult thing to do. You just
have to look at your following and there are so many different people you can
support and of course you shouldn't just support them if they're diverse you know,
you have to make sure you like their content, but if the only people you're
supporting are privileged people, then I'm questioning why you only enjoy the
content of privileged people because that brings into question whether you
really truly want to be an ally and whether you really truly want to help
marginalized people if you don't even want to support them and so I think by
dismantling this us-versus-them culture and including more marginalized people
in our, like, subscribed to or whatever else, I think that that will really help
improve your time in the community and bring you some more interesting and
important discussions to be a part of and I think once you start doing that
then you can work towards dismantling in this culture because now I
just see my following as my following because I follow people of all skin
colors and all sexualities and romantic orientations and such and all of those
different aspects. It's important to hear stories that are unlike yourselves, but
then also have people who are like you and so if you're supporting all
different types of people you get both of those. The second thing I want to
discuss is speaking with marginalized people and not speaking for them which I
think is slightly more difficult than the first. Here's the thing, it's
important that allies are there in times of difficulty for marginalized people,
but it's also important that on issues that affect a certain group of people
they get the primary platform. Speaking with them and not for them is the
important thing and, yes, boosting them can contribute to that, but you also need
to be able to say something. You know, you can do whatever it does that makes you
feel like you're contributing something as an ally whether that's like a makeup
look or some other form of artistic expression like a song or something like
that, but that's just talking the talk, so unless you walk the walk, you're not
really a true ally. To walk the walk, you have to be speaking with marginalized
people which means that in certain scenarios where a marginalized person is
visibly uncomfortable with a conversation that they're having, you can
step in and you can tell that other person to back away or in that situation
you can like reiterate what the marginalized person was saying and then
tell that reason to back away because this is visibly making them
uncomfortable or in situations where you can offer some sort of support to
marginalized people like Bi Visibility Day or Suicide Prevention Month or
Mental Illness Awareness Week or Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month, things
like that. During those times you can make sure that you are offering them a
platform and that you are speaking with them, so that you're letting them share their
stories and that you're listening and that you are responding and that you're
actually being involved in that conversation because they don't know that
you're listening unless you make a response, unless you interact with them,
they don't know that anyone's actually listening to their story and that
they're being heard. So the thing about speaking with them is that you can't
step out of your lane, you can't say what is right and what is wrong unless you
are currently experiencing that yourself, so you have to listen to what they say
and promote that and reiterate that and be there for them. Not all diverse people
are a monolith, so just what one person says may not
apply to everyone, but you can look at what everyone says and kind of try to
apply yourself to what you find is good--like, of course, my video on allyship might be
different than someone else's and maybe if this is what you agree with this is
what you can implement or maybe if someone else's is what you agree with that
is what you can implement, so you have to figure out how to balance that and I
can't sit here and tell you the best way to do that, but I think that what's most
important is that you are showing them that you're listening because I know
that that's what makes me feel most heard personally when I get a response
to a tweet I post about my skin color or something like that when I get those
responses I feel like I'm actually being listened to and what I'm saying is being
heard or scenarios where I can't speak up for myself, so someone else is there
to help me speak up, but they don't put words in my mouth.
Things like that I know from personal experience make me feel better, but it
really depends - you have to figure out what you find is the best balance with
that and, sure, trial-and-error may play a part in that which will bring me to my
third point, but the point is that you need to find the best way to do that
because you can't be an ally if you're not walking the walk. The third point is
to apologize when you mess up because you are going to mess up - that is
inevitable. No one is perfect. I am not perfect. I've messed up on this stuff
before and I'm sure everyone who's watching this video has messed up at
least once, if not more, so no one is perfect. But, if you're a writer or if you are reviewing a certain book - do as much
research as you can, put in the time, put in the effort and if you do
so and then you mess up, you have to take ownership of that and apologize and if
people can't forgive your apology you know - no one is obligated to forgive you
of course, but if they can't forgive your apology then it's not completely on you.
Of course, you can't just apologize - you have to go forth and put in the effort
to improve whatever it was that you may have messed up on and you have to make
sure not to do that again, but if after that they still can't forgive you, you
know that's their choice, they are completely and 100% allowed to make that
choice it's valid, but you can't let that sit there and take you down and
make you feel like you're not a true ally. I have found that at times the
community sets unrealistic expectations of perfection out of allies, especially
if those allies are marginalized in some way and I think that that is not the
best mindset to have. I would actually go as far as calling it a toxic mindset, but I
want my words to be twisted here. I just think that it doesn't work because one,
it gives unrealistic expectations to teen readers because we're in a YA
community, so by setting those unrealistic expectations on teen readers
you're ruining their experience in the community. I know that has happened to me.
Of course, my decisions were my own - no one else made them for me, but it was
influenced by what I had seen in the community and what I had seen is that
perfection is what was expected, so that was what I held myself up to and what I
held other people up to. No one is perfect. No one is going to be perfect.
You can't have that expectation out of people because if you continuously
expect people to be perfect, you're gonna ruin everyone's experiences because then
you are never going to be satisfied with anything, plus you're also going to ruin
other people because then they're not going to want to help you if they don't
feel like they're allowed to make mistakes and I'm not saying that you
should let those mistakes go and be like oh whatever. That's not what I'm saying.
I'm not saying that you should let it go - you should call them out on it, but you
should also be willing to let them learn and if they don't learn, if they are not
receptive that's not on you again and then they're obviously not a good ally,
so you're better off you know without them being a fake ally, but if they are
receptive and they're taking the time to learn then holding it out
instead and not letting them have a second chance just seems like the
opposite of what we're trying to do in this community because what we're trying
to do is make a safe and inclusive environment for everyone and that
includes everyone - not just certain people, not just the people who've never
messed up yet or something like that. And I also want to acknowledge something
else as I'm speaking about this - it's impossible to not like something
problematic because practically every piece of media is problematic and that
is an issue that I don't want to get into right now, but the point is if we
continuously bring people down for locking problematic things then we're
not gonna get anywhere. Of course, there are certain levels of problematic-ness
that you can't support like for example The Black Witch - that's a no, you don't
support something like that, but something that's not perfect and has
certain problems - you can't tell people not to support that. If they can
acknowledge the problems and if they are willing to be vocal about them and make
sure that those are some of the first things heard when they bring it up, then
you have to let them enjoy what they enjoy because you can't just
continuously take away people's forms of enjoyment because then, again, the
experience in the community won't be enjoyable for anyone and I don't think
that that's the community we want to create for other people and at least I
hope that's not. I know a lot of people are going to disagree with my views and
that's okay - to each their own, but I firmly stand with these three main
points and I think that these are the most important points that come with
being an ally because I've just learned that from my time in the community and
I've learned that this is what seems to be the most useful way of going about it
because as long as we're having discussions at each other and we're
talking about each other we're not gonna get anywhere. We have to start talking to
each other because if we're not talking to each other then where is progress
going to come from, how are we going to get anywhere further if we can't tell
people when they're messing up, and again, if they are receptive that's not on you
that's on them and you don't owe them anything after that, but if they're
receptive and they try to improve, then you can't ask them
to do much more than that and I think it's unrealistic to expect that from
them. Expecting perfection and not talking to anyone about your
expectations in the first place is not gonna get us anywhere - we need to discuss
with each other and that's what I hope that this community can start to do more
of going forward because I find that that has gotten lost in quite a few
conversations that I've seen happen from my time in the community. And this video
is not meant for one specific thing, it's been a video I've been planning to make for a
while and now I'm finally sitting down and making it and I hope that you might
take this to heart and see that my points have some validity to them even
if you don't completely agree which I respect. I know this video was kind of
serious, but I still hope you enjoyed it and I would love to hear your thoughts
on the things I said, so comment them down below and then we can chat and we
can have a discussion with each other which was exactly the point of this
video. If you did enjoy this video, please give it a like and subscribe because I
make new videos every Sunday and usually they are pretty happy and about books,
but sometimes we have to talk about the serious issues too. And as usual, all of
our social media and my Goodreads will be in the description below, if you're
interested in following me anywhere else. Thank you all so much for watching, I
hope you are having a lovely day or night wherever you are, please remember
you're beautiful and you deserve the world, and I will see you next week with
a brand new video, goodbye!
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