No! Against Adult Supremacy
Children of Colour in White Circles Victoria Law
Siu Loong means “Little Dragon” in Cantonese. But Siu Loong herself isn’t Cantonese. She isn’t even one hundred percent Chinese. Through me, she can claim to be Hakka, Suzhonese and Shanghainese. From her father, she can claim to be Finnish, Hungarian and Jewish. But she is also an American living among American anarchists, where none of this supposedly matters. Before motherhood became a consideration, I paid little attention to the lack of colour in the New York City anarchist “scene.” So what if no one looked like me? Weren’t we all struggling for the same thing? Pregnancy made me sit up and look around at the demographics of the anarchists around me. Yes, I had followed (but not participated) in the short-lived discussion on white privilege in Seattle’s protests against the WTO. Yes, I would confront my fellow anarchists about their internalised racism. But I never really went further and questioned why there were so few people of colour – never mind people of colour like me – in the anarchist movement. Motherhood forced me to open my eyes. Before the recommended six weeks of postpartum rest were up, I was up and about on my various projects. Virtually everyone was supportive of my new role as mother and on-call cow. However, I started noticing small things that bothered me about my (mostly white) activist circles. For starters, no one could pronounce my daughter’s name correctly. It was pronounced, “Sue Long,” “Si Long,” “Sue La,” any which way except the way it was supposed to be pronounced. If people didn’t have trouble making a small circle with their lips to say the word “sou,” they couldn’t remember that “loong” had two “o”s. One person tried to shorter her name to Suzy. I very firmly put a stop to that. Before Siu Loong could even remember her environment, I looked at the young children who made up the anarchist scene. Who would she be playing with when she grew old enough to interact with other kids? Most anarchists do not have children. Whether this is a political statement or a personal choice, the face remains that anarchist children are few and far between. On the Lower East Side, the anarchists who choose parenthood and had enough support to remain somewhat involved in the movement tend to be white. It bothers me that Siu Loong’s companions are almost all white. I do not want her growing up in an all-white (or predominantly white) environment. I do not want her to wonder if she is somehow incorrect for not having blond hair and blue eyes as many of her peers do. When I have brought this up with other anarchist parents, they dismiss my concerns. Of course they do not have to worry about whether their 234