janaya khan highlights today's political issues and problems with activism during One Book keynote

janaya khan, an activist and co-founder of Black Lives Matter Canada, opened their One Book, One Richmond keynote lecture Thursday night by encouraging students to combat the "we’re not going to win mentality" that allowed the political left to become fragmented.

“Where we struggle isn’t coming together against something,” khan said. “It's coming together for something.”

khan is a self-proclaimed black, queer, gender non-conforming person who uses the pronouns them/they and does not use capital letters in their name. 

In their talk titled, "Demanding Social Transformation, Justice and Equality for All," khan voiced their frustration to a sold-out crowd over the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation as well as a variety of issues – including white supremacy, women’s rights, environmental justice and international race relations.

khan came to the University of Richmond as part of the One Book, One Richmond series promoting this year’s chosen book, "When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir," written by their partner Patrisse Khan-Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. The book is about Cullors’ experience growing up in West Los Angeles and living with the wealth inequality in her city firsthand.

khan spoke about the wealth inequality among voters in the 2016 election and what led to President Donald Trump’s victory. Although many people think that poor rural Americans mainly backed Trump, khan said the median income of Trump voters was actually $77,000. But that wasn’t the biggest predictor for support for Trump, khan said: It was zip code.

khan said the political left blamed the 2016 loss on two factors, the lack of engagement among the poor white class and identity politics.

“What we do and how we organize should not be bound by our identities,” khan said. “I want us to get to a place where our identities aren’t forming our politics.”

khan was critical of the political left throughout the talk, calling it out on its inability to function without throwing black people under the bus, they said. They also touched on the left not being able to openly discuss race although the right had no problems. White extremists talk about race all the time, whether it's Jews or black people, they said.

“We cannot allow ourselves to be out-organized by white supremacy,” khan said. “One of the greatest motivators for the political right is fear, but we aren’t motivated by fear. It immobilizes us.”

Jonathan Alvarez, a senior who attended the lecture, said he was surprised about how much khan criticized their own side and even protests that khan themself had organized.

“I didn’t think [they] would rip into how unorganized Black Lives Matter and other protests are,” he said, “although the things [they] said could’ve been worse.”

The atmosphere of fear in America doesn’t have to make sense to the right, khan said. khan said nothing had to make sense to the right. The right “went down the rabbit hole and didn’t learn a damn thing,” khan said.

Losing a job to an immigrant or having one's community infiltrated are fears that incite the political right, khan said, but they said those things had already happened and now it was up to the right to accept it. 

"Fragile" and "snowflake" are some of the insults commonly used against liberals, khan said. khan said they didn't understand this when the white nationalists were the ones getting upset. A snowflake is beautiful, khan said.

khan was also a workshop leader at the Connecting Womxn of Color Conference on Friday, Oct. 26. 

Contact contributor Mario Hernandez at mario.hernandezmata@richmond.edu.