When good intentions cause harm

When visibility becomes a substitute for action

In June 2020, millions of black squares appeared across Instagram. For 24 hours, feeds that normally promoted photography, fashion, travel, food, and personal brands became declarations of solidarity with Black lives. The image spread rapidly because it was simple and immediately recognisable. It allowed people to communicate concern, grief, outrage, or support through a single visual gesture. Yet as the squares multiplied, another question emerged. What happens when the image disappears from the feed? What remains once visibility has been achieved and public attention begins to move elsewhere?

Photography offers a useful way of thinking about this question because photography has always existed in the uneasy space between seeing and understanding. A photograph can make something visible without helping us understand it. We can look at an image of protest without understanding the conditions that produced it. We can see a photograph of injustice without examining the systems that allow that injustice to continue. Visibility matters because things that cannot be seen are often ignored, but visibility alone does not create change. Seeing something is not the same as responding to it.

The same tension sits at the heart of performative allyship. Performative allyship occurs when the appearance of solidarity becomes more important than the practice of it. It is not necessarily driven by bad intentions. In fact, it often emerges from genuine concern. People encounter an injustice, feel compelled to respond, and look for ways to express their support. The problem begins when that expression becomes the end point rather than the starting point. Public gestures replace sustained commitment, and being seen to care gradually becomes more important than the difficult work of confronting the conditions that made support necessary in the first place.

Why visibility feels like action

One reason performative allyship is so common is that contemporary culture places enormous value on visibility. Social media platforms encourage us to communicate who we are through images, statements, affiliations, and carefully curated expressions of identity. We learn to present ourselves publicly and, over time, that presentation can become difficult to separate from action itself. Posting about an issue feels meaningful because it creates evidence of our concern. Sharing a resource feels like participation because it signals awareness. Yet there is an important difference between demonstrating a value and living according to it.

This distinction becomes clearer when we consider how photographs function. A photograph can prove that someone was present at a particular moment, but it cannot tell us what they understood, what they believed, or what they did afterwards. The image records presence, not commitment. In much the same way, public declarations of solidarity can demonstrate awareness without revealing whether that awareness leads to meaningful action. The problem is not that people speak publicly. The problem is the assumption that speaking publicly is enough.

What Black photographers teach us about looking

Many Black photographers have spent decades exploring the gap between appearance and reality. Their work repeatedly challenges the idea that photographs provide simple or complete truths. Instead, they ask viewers to think more carefully about what remains outside the frame, whose perspectives are missing, and how power shapes what is seen and what is ignored. Looking becomes an active process rather than a passive one. The viewer is asked not merely to observe but to question, interpret, and take responsibility for what they encounter.

This is one reason Black photography offers an important lesson for allyship. Recognition is only the beginning. It is possible to recognise injustice without challenging it. It is possible to acknowledge inequality without examining how we benefit from it. It is possible to support a cause publicly while avoiding the private conversations, decisions, and sacrifices that meaningful change often requires. Recognition matters, but it becomes transformative only when it leads to responsibility.

Three questions worth asking

Rather than trying to determine whether we qualify as good allies, it may be more useful to ask harder questions about the nature of our commitment. Three questions, in particular, can reveal the difference between solidarity as performance and solidarity as practice:

What does this commitment actually cost us?

Support that requires no sacrifice is often easier to sustain because it does not threaten our comfort, relationships, reputation, or access to power. Yet meaningful solidarity frequently demands something of us. It may require difficult conversations with friends and family, a willingness to challenge exclusion in our workplaces and communities, or the redistribution of resources and opportunities that we might otherwise take for granted. If our support never asks anything of us, it is worth considering how much it is truly changing.

Who benefits from our actions?

This question can be uncomfortable because the answer is not always straightforward. Some forms of allyship direct attention, resources, and opportunities towards those who have historically been denied them. Other forms primarily enhance the image of the person performing them. They communicate awareness, compassion, or progressiveness without materially affecting the conditions they claim to challenge. Distinguishing between the two requires us to examine not only what we do, but also why we do it.

Would we continue this work if nobody knew about it?

In a culture that rewards visibility, this may be the most revealing question of all. Much of the most important work happens away from public view, in workplaces, classrooms, churches, boardrooms, voting booths, and family conversations. These moments rarely attract recognition, yet they often reveal the depth of our convictions more clearly than any public statement. They show whether our commitment is rooted in a desire for justice or in a desire to be seen as someone who cares about it.

Beyond performance

The goal of this conversation is not perfection. Nobody moves through the world without blind spots, contradictions, or mistakes. The question is whether we are willing to remain engaged when the work becomes difficult, inconvenient, or invisible. Performative allyship thrives when visibility is treated as the destination. Authentic solidarity begins when visibility becomes an invitation to deeper engagement rather than a substitute for it.

A photograph can make us aware of a reality we had previously ignored, but awareness alone is never the final stage of seeing. The most powerful photographs change how we understand the world and, in doing so, change how we move through it. Allyship operates according to a similar principle. Its value is not measured by how convincingly it communicates concern. Its value is measured by whether that concern produces accountability, responsibility, and action long after public attention has moved on.