The Idea of Allyship Needs to End

I am not your ally; I am what you need me to be

Shane Paul Neil
LEVEL
Published in
5 min readDec 22, 2019

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3 people facing each other standing on painted venn diagrams
Photo: Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision/Getty Images

“Do you consider yourself an ally?” she asks. We’re sitting in a studio recording my podcast.

How do you answer this? If the answer is yes, how do you prove it? How do you quantify support? If the answer is no, does that immediately mean that you don’t care about marginalized people?

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Shane Paul Neil
LEVEL
Writer for

Writer (duh) and photographer. Bylines @levelmag @complex @ebony @huffpo shanepaulneil.com