Where Are the “No Kings” White Folks When All Roads Lead to the South?
A Reflection on Allyship, Solidarity, and Showing Up For Real
Happy Sunday
As Sundays often are for many of us who are the products of Americanized colonial Christianity, I have found myself this morning in reflection.
Sitting quietly.
Praying.
Thinking.
Listening to what is surfacing beneath the noise.
Because even for those of us who have deconstructed, disentangled, or reimagined our relationship with religion, our bodies still remember.
They remember Sundays as sacred.
As contemplative.
As a space to pause long enough to ask ourselves difficult questions about who we are becoming and what kind of world we are participating in creating.
And this morning one question keeps returning to me:
Where are all the “No Kings” white folks when the roads lead South?
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Because I keep watching white-bodied people loudly declare resistance online while remaining absent from the places where this country’s systems of oppression were perfected, rehearsed, and exported outward into the rest of America.
And the more I sit with that tension, the more I realize this is not simply a political question.
It is a relational one.
A historical one.
A somatic one.
Because what continues surfacing is the difference between allyship and solidarity.
And if we are honest, many people still do not understand the difference between the two.
Before you go further, take a moment here.
Not to rush toward agreement or defensiveness.
Not to prepare your counterargument.
Not to decide whether this feels “fair.”Just pause.
Take a breath.🌬️
Notice what is happening in your body as you read this.
Maybe there is tightness in your chest.
Maybe your stomach clenched.
Maybe you immediately began searching for exceptions.
Maybe you felt grief.
Anger.
Relief.
Recognition.
Numbness.Just notice.
No performance.
No perfection.
No immediate need to resolve what comes up.This work has never only been intellectual.
The body tells the truth long before the mouth does.
And many of us have been conditioned to move away from discomfort so quickly that we never stay present long enough to understand what the discomfort is trying to reveal.
So before we continue, let yourself arrive fully here.
Because solidarity requires more than agreement.
It requires the capacity to remain present when truth disrupts the stories we have been taught about ourselves, each other, and the systems we live inside of.
Back to the question sitting heavy in my spirit right now.
Where are all the “No Kings” white folks when the march leads South?
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Where are the white-bodied people who flood timelines with declarations about democracy, fascism, resistance, and justice when Black and Indigenous people are once again organizing in the places this country has always used as both its foundation and its scapegoat?
Where are they when the roads lead to Montgomery?
Because this is not a new cycle.
It is an American one.
And if you have been in community with me for any amount of time, then you already know I have spent years speaking about the difference between allyship and solidarity.
Not because language games matter more than action.
But because the words themselves reveal the body underneath them.
And bodies tell the truth eventually.
The Difference Between Allyship and Solidarity
Allyship has always been complicated for me because historically, the word itself comes from war language.
Allies are people who come together against a common enemy because there is mutual benefit in doing so.
That is important to understand because many white-bodied people approach allyship as identity instead of relationship.
As branding instead of transformation.
As moral positioning instead of collective survival.
And that is why so much allyship becomes performative.
Because many white-bodied people still unconsciously see themselves as saviors of Black and Indigenous people rather than people who themselves are harmed by systems of domination.
Read that again slowly.
Not harmed in the same ways.
Not equally impacted.
Not oppressed identically.
But harmed nonetheless.
Because supremacy culture deforms everyone inside of it.
And that is where solidarity becomes different.
Solidarity is the recognition that your liberation is tied to dismantling the very systems that taught you domination in the first place.
Solidarity says:
“I am not standing beside you because I am morally superior to oppression.
I am standing with you because these systems are destroying all of us differently.”
That shift changes everything.
Because now the work is no longer charity.
It is survival.
The South Has Always Been the Blueprint
One of the greatest tricks America ever pulled was convincing people that racism “lives in the South” while the rest of the country simply evolved past it.
But ALL roads in America lead back to the South.
The plantation economy.
Policing.
Mass incarceration.
Land theft.
Racial capitalism.
Forced labor.
Evangelical nationalism.
Surveillance.
State violence.
Economic extraction.
The South became the prototype.
The rest of America simply industrialized it.
And yet many white liberals still engage the South as spectacle rather than mirror.
They consume Southern racism as though it is separate from them instead of foundational to the systems they themselves still benefit from.
That is why moments like this matter.
Because when resistance requires physically entering Southern spaces of accountability and historical confrontation, many people disappear.
Not because they stopped caring.
But because solidarity requires something performance cannot sustain:
Proximity.
Proximity to discomfort.
Proximity to grief.
Proximity to accountability.
Proximity to contradiction.
Proximity to risk.
And many white-bodied people have only trained themselves for visibility, not endurance.
Supremacy Culture Lives in the Body
This is what I have spent over a decade teaching.
Supremacy culture is not just ideological.
It is embodied.
It lives in nervous systems.
In relational patterns.
In conflict avoidance.
In urgency.
In perfectionism.
In emotional fragility.
In disconnection.
In the constant need to appear “good” instead of becoming accountable.
The body will always choose regulation before transformation if we do not intentionally build capacity for discomfort.
That is why performance becomes so seductive.
Posting regulates anxiety.
Optics regulate anxiety.
Identity labels regulate anxiety.
But transformation destabilizes.
And many people have never built the somatic capacity necessary for sustained solidarity.
So they retreat into performance because performance feels safer than surrendering identity.
This is why I keep reminding people:
Decolonization is not aesthetic.
It is relational restructuring.
It is grieving.
It is accountability.
It is interruption.
It is reorientation.
It is learning how to stay present when your body wants to flee discomfort.
And most importantly:
It is community work.
We Have Seen This Before
Historically, this cycle repeats itself over and over again.
White participation increases when resistance feels symbolic.
It decreases when resistance requires sustained transformation.
We saw it after Reconstruction.
We saw it during the Civil Rights Movement.
We saw it after George Floyd.
We see it every single time there is collective outrage followed by collective retreat.
Because moral performance is easier than relational accountability.
And many white-bodied people are still operating through paternalism without realizing it.
Not partnership.
Not interdependence.
Not co-liberation.
Paternalism. (learn more here)
The unconscious belief that you are “helping” marginalized communities rather than confronting the systems deforming your own humanity too.
That is why so many movements collapse under the weight of fragility once the emotional high of “showing up” wears off.
Because solidarity was never fully embodied.
Only expressed.
This Is Why I Have Written What I Have Written
This conversation did not begin today.
It has been unfolding through years of my work.
In “Decolonization and Deepening Allyship” I explored how allyship without internal transformation cannot sustain collective liberation.
In “Performative Allyship Didn’t Start with Blue Bracelets” I unpacked how symbolism repeatedly replaces embodied action.
In “Inside-Out Allyship: Building True Community Through Reflection and Accountability” I spoke about the necessity of internal examination before external alignment.
In “From Ally to Co-Creator” I explored what becomes possible when people stop centering saviorism and begin practicing collective responsibility.
And in “Dear White Women, This Is Where the Work Begins” I named something many people still resist:
The work cannot begin and end in proximity to marginalized pain while remaining disconnected from accountability within white communities themselves.
Because the truth is:
Black and Indigenous communities have already been resisting these systems.
For generations.
If liberation was simply about surviving oppression, we would already be free.
The deeper question has always been:
Will the people conditioned into domination choose transformation before collapse forces it upon everyone?
Solidarity Is Not Charity
This moment requires something deeper than “being a good ally.”
That framework is too small now.
Too fragile.
Too identity-based.
Too dependent on optics.
What we need is solidarity rooted in the understanding that supremacy culture is not only killing the oppressed.
It is spiritually deforming everyone inside of it.
It destroys community.
It destroys intimacy.
It destroys emotional capacity.
It destroys relational trust.
It destroys the ability to remain human with one another.
And until white-bodied people understand that in your bodies (not just intellectually) we will continue repeating the same cycle:
Temporary awakening.
Symbolic outrage.
Collective retreat.
Historical amnesia.
Over and over again.
So yes.
I am asking where the white folks are when the roads lead South.
But beneath that question is another one entirely:
Are you interested in appearing liberated?
Or are you finally ready to become accountable to the kind of community liberation actually requires?
Because solidarity is not charity.
It is survival.
And survival has always required all of us.
The remainder of this piece moves into Practice Your Praxis — the part where reflection becomes relational and actionable. Along with an invitation to join the 9-month-long Liberation Journey.
Because awareness without practice can easily become performance.
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