No Kings?
The start of a movement or only a social media moment?
I want to amplify an article by Tiffany “Tiffy” Hammond that offers a much more detailed look at the “No Kings” protests than I’ve been able to articulate.
A few days ago the second “No Kings” protest/march/gathering was held. And a few days ago I shared my first post about it. An open letter that came from a place of love but did not trip over itself to hold hands.
I expected the anger that would come from my criticisms, what I didn’t expect was the full-blown HATE that damn near kicked my back in.
…
And if you do it right, you’re going to lose something. This work will cost you. A friend. A job. Respect. Family. And for white folk, when you walk alongside those who are hurt by those with skin like yours, you will lose. When you are actively work to dismantle systems you benefit from, you will lose. You will lose in this work. Simply showing up isn’t work. Us looking at you in our spaces isn’t work. Blacking your profile pics isn’t work. Hashtags isn’t work. Trendy metaphors isn’t work. Catchy phrases…isn’t work. Protests that resemble parades with costume contests and prizes for best prize isn’t work.
There is a personal story I want to add, and that is about the costs of actually being active in a movement rather than the safety of showing up to a moment.
One of the many privileges of being included in Whiteness is that you can live your life without being induced to actually learn what Racism is. Thinking Racism is about individuals being rude to (or prejudiced against) other individuals is like confusing a flake of snow on the surface of an iceberg for the entire iceberg.
I wrote earlier how events in 2020 caused me to finally notice I was missing something, and I started a deep dive. I don’t mean casual reading, but it became an Autistic Special Interest (for those who know how deep that can go).
There is a coworker of my highschool biology teaching wife that became good family friends. I’ve known them for decades, and watched their children grow up. This included visiting with their entire family (parents of friend when the parents were still alive, their siblings, their children, children of siblings, uncles, etc) at the family cottage.
Then in the summer of 2021 my wife and I were both reading books on anti-racism. There were titles like “How to be an Antiracist”, but the one that had a cost was us reading “Why I’m no longer talking to White people about race” at that cottage.
(Blog post that ended up being extended into the book)
While this decades-long friend never read the book, they performed the book.
The title itself was offensive to them, and they got more and more angry and defensive as the weekend went on. They had words they insisted on saying to (yelling at) me, and they made up words they incorrectly believe I said to them.
I have been excommunicated, and haven’t seen that person or that family since. I didn’t actually say anything as I didn’t have to: the books I was reading meant I was becoming part of a movement that this White liberal woman found offensive.
Yes, as is discussed in several books and articles I’ve read in recent years, it is White liberals that are often even more offended by real learning about racism than conservatives. They are far more focused on wanting to perform “I am a good individual” than actually learning about or doing anything to help solve real systemic problems.
For clarity: This happened in Canada. I live in Ottawa, Ontario and the cottage in question is near Gatineau, Quebec. Contrary to the marketing we all grew up with in North America, the Dominion of Canada, United States of America and Confederate States of America are quite similar.
While that was a story about one person and a book cover, I have experienced related issues with many fellow White people. While I will bring the topic up as a test, there are many White people in my life who have been unable to rationally handle any conversation about the social construct of Race or the social hierarchy of Racism.
These hierarchies, whether discussing feudalism/monarchies/oligarchy/kleptocracy (etc) or sexism/racism/cis-normativity/neuro-normativity (etc), are all interconnected. It isn’t possible to work against only one and maintain the rest (for your personal benefit) if you actually want to create a stable democratic society.
For Canada and the USA, the founding hierarchies are Christian Supremacy and White Supremacy, and dismantling any other hierarchies will necessarily involve dealing with those issues.
I maintain an anti-racism tag on this blog. I believe the angry dismissal of what Tiffany Hammond wrote is most likely part of an expression of White (especially liberal) priviledge.
My take on the formation of the British North American settler-colonial projects, currently consolidated into the USA and Canada. Neither of these sets of institutions are examples of decolonization, or any breaking away from the “King” (Monarchy) style strict hierarchies the colonialists brought from Europe and imposed on this continent.
There are myths about how Canada or the USA are “not racist” while the Confederate States were. There is always this pointing to some “other” as an excuse to do nothing and change nothing.
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You knocked this one out of the park (a baseball metaphor dedicated to Canada's presence in the World Series, yuk yuk yuk...)!!! Seriously, great job!