Why wasn't No Kings Day "present" among Black Americans?

Fanon (Franz) would argue that the struggle extends beyond mere access to another's system of meaning; it encompasses the pursuit of entirely new systems. In this light, the absence of Black bodies at No Kings Day is not merely a void; it serves as a silent manifesto.

By Don Allen for Journal of A Black Teacher (2025)

When we explore these photos from the so-called "No Kings Day" festival, lit with parades, costume wear, and street festivals, what becomes noteworthy is not only the massive number of white participants, but also that this spectacle contrives to reinforce a sense of monarchy and nobility aesthetic that was historically denied to black people. It is therefore no surprise that to many black people on these shores, this festival feels peripheral, even alienating.

Fanon declares that "the colonial world is a world cut in two" - an exclusion that moves well beyond the material, to the structural and psychic levels. In other words, African people in America have always stood outside these borders, excluded from traditions based on "king/queen" lineages or native aristocracy. White Americans, overtly or tacitly, identify their cultural self-assurance and popular celebration with these lineages. The pictures of crowns, knights, and aristocratic pageantry attached to that event place white people at society's center; it frames black people's absence not as simple indifference, but as a historically rationalizable reality.

Indeed, Fanon observes, "For the black man, there is only one destiny. And it is white." This searing observation distills the way that Black identity was created under the auspices of whiteness, an identity created as an antithesis to white cultural prototypes. When No Kings Day evokes images of royalty, authenticity, and inherited privilege, it makes black people confront cultural texts that were never written for them. Why do we need to stand up for a crown that was never written for us to wear?

In the video coverage of the event, as well as photo essays that document it, overabundant white faces and white bodies transmit more than population-based decisions; it is a reverberation of a greater cultural legitimation. It sends a distinct message: this civic ceremony is for those whose ancestry has traditionally held power, for those who have long become part of the history of "kings and queens." But for Black people whose inheritance is not that of crowned royalty but rather chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and institutional exclusion, those events may ring hollow. Doing so does not create a sense of community service; it is perceived as a validation of another person's ancestry.

In addition, as Fanon reminds us, "colonialism never gives anything away for nothing." The white-dominated celebration of No Kings Day doesn't simply open its gates to others; it provides optics, power continuities, and ritual legitimacy. As Black Americans consider this celebration, the unspoken offer is: come to our dance of inherited prestige. But they remember the history: theirs was not a seat at the table. Theirs was not a kingship; rather, that of exploited subjects. To come would be to legitimize precisely those power structures that they've been instructed to challenge.

In reality, No Black Americans at No Kings Day is not absence, it's refusal, or rather: critique through omission. It's: you're celebrating a history we were intentionally left off of. We're not participating as insiders; we're observing as outsiders, because we're not participating as peers. The theory of the colonized self that Fanon developed, that self forged under the eye of the colonizer, is relevant here. This celebration is reaffirming a culture of power through inheritance, and to many Black Americans, that world is foreign (Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 1952).

I am not advocating that Black Americans as a whole must boycott such events, that all absences are political. But when we are serious regarding equity, we must ask: who makes these traditions? It is who must be at home in them? And what does it mean when a people as a whole chooses not to be part of the cultural scripts of prestige, of monarchy, as outsiders? Ultimately, the message rings true. When white individuals don their crowns and publicly honor their companions in a grand spectacle, they invite everyone else to be mere spectators. However, for those who were never bestowed with a throne or a lineage, the crown loses its luster; instead, it becomes a burden. Fanon would argue that the struggle extends beyond mere access to another's system of meaning; it encompasses the pursuit of entirely new systems. In this light, the absence of Black bodies at No Kings Day is not merely a void; it serves as a silent manifesto.