Previously published on Dr. Rohini Anand’s Linkedin >>

We live in an age of performance. We curate our lives, posting on social media what we want others to see of us. What we do and say can so easily be made public or reduced to a 280-character tweet.

We also live in a time of growing awareness of the need for true allyship. But as the Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements have grown, so have the examples of performative allyship – people speaking up to prove that they are “woke” rather than stepping up to take action for embedding systemic change.

The pressure to prove that we are “woke” is huge. But being “woke” does not inherently change systems or make things better for those who have been systematically excluded from those systems. Ultimately, being a performative ally is self-serving – it is not about serving others.