Photo by Stacy Keck
Let’s be real about who gets to protest peacefully.
To all m’ladies of the Caucasian persuasion: Can we talk for just a sec about peaceful protests like we didn’t invent them? Because we did not.
Since more than 40,000 predominantly-white San Diegans joined millions of others around the country (and world, but I’m focusing on AmeriKKKa today) for the Women’s March, there’s been much back-patting and unintentional patronizing about how peaceful it all was. As if we’re saying, “See, every-other-group-of-protesters ever? This is how to do it.”
And I’m here to say, to my melanin-deficient tribe—with our Zara blanket scarves and Sperry Duck Boots and mindless appropriation with most excellent intentions—Nyet!
Sure, the various Women’s Marches were peaceful. But not because participants did anything differently than, say, Black Lives Matter activists. (And we all know this is the implied comparison when we point to photos of white-lady marchers with smiling policemen wearing pink pussyhats). No, my kind white ladies, gents and theys, the marches were peaceful because police allowed them to be peaceful. But I’ll unpack that statement in a minute.
For now, let’s take a step into Black History Month since that is the only time wypipo generally give two Fun-Dip sticks and a lick about Black history. Which, btw, is regular old history. But since Black history doesn’t, by definition, feature white people at its core, it makes us white folks uncomfortable. So we often rewrite it and segregate it to protect our supremacy. Whew. You still with me, or did you shut down?
Please. If you marched on Jan. 21st, make the effort and absorb these CliffsNotes:
On Feb. 1, 1960, four Black college students sat down at a whites-only lunch counter at F.W. Woolworth’s in Greensboro, N.C., and ordered coffee. Ezell Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil and David Richmond weren’t served, of course, and were instead asked to leave. They refused, bravely staying put for 30 minutes until closing time.
“I had pre-concluded,” said McCain in a 2008 interview with NPR, “If I were lucky, I would go to prison for a long, long time. If I were not so lucky, I would come back to my university campus in a pine box.”
All of the Greensboro Four made it safely back to their campus that evening and returned to Woolworth’s the following day with 21 friends. (Among them were four Black women whose names we do not know, whose metaphorical—and literal, perhaps?— ancestors were among us during the Women’s March, rightly mistrustful of our newly-claimed “intersectional feminism.”) This time, the students sat unserved for four hours, studying and enduring the verbal harassment of white diners.
By day three, the protesters had tripled in number with Black women making up a third of those taking shifts at the lunch counter. By Saturday (resistance doesn’t take weekends off), the number of nonviolent Black protesters had swelled. So, too, had the contingent of racist antagonists. There were roughly 1,000 people packed in when a bomb threat forced the closure of Woolworth’s that afternoon.
Throughout the spring and early summer, these peaceful sit-ins led predominantly by Black people grew in size and number. They spread throughout cities in the south, and to a few in the north, and by the end of July, Woolworth’s was desegregated. This most famous of sit-ins forced all kinds of desegregation.
The risks were beyond any that American white people, save perhaps Holocaust survivors and refugees, have ever faced or can truly fathom today. The benefits, too, seem to evade our comprehension.
“Fifteen seconds after I sat on that stool, I had the most wonderful feeling,” said McCain, who died in 2014. “I had a feeling of liberation, restored manhood. I had a natural high. And I truly felt almost invincible. Mind you, just sitting on a dumb stool…It was a feeling I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to have again. And I felt as though I wouldn’t have been cheated out of life had that been the end of my life at that second, at that moment.”
That description is something else, isn’t it?
Liberation and humanity. That is what Black and brown people want and deserve. That is what the non-violent Black Lives Matter marches are about; what Standing Rock is about. And that is what white people are not participating in.
The protests and marches on behalf of Black and brown lives are as non-violent as the Women’s March. I’ve been to many of these marches, in different cities and in different states, and I can tell you: They are non-violent.
That is, until the police show up to instigate with rubber bullets, tasers and protective masks, not to mention masks, billy clubs, fire hoses and riot gear.
People, there were no cops in pink pussyhats at the Alfred Olango protest marches. But, there was a white agitator in a Trump trucker hat. There were no friendly officers giving hugs to the peaceful activists at the spot where Olango was murdered. But there were riot-clad officers threatening peaceful vigil-holders with arrest. There was no light police presence keeping a friendly eye on participants. But there was an El Cajon Police Department watchtower erected in the parking lot to keep tabs on the almost uniformly non-white peaceful crowd.
Any violence taking place at marches and protests led by people of color are, by and large, intentionally instigated by police. Fact: This would not be happening if our powerful tribe of white folks participated. The biggest difference between the peaceful Women’s March and Black Lives Matter is one of melanin privilege. Women’s Marchers claim their causes are intersectional. So, I’ll see you all out in big numbers at the next march for Black Lives or refugees or DREAMers. Right? Right?