Why do kindness and activism belong together?

For years, I have been discussing the difference between niceness and kindness. I hate that the notion of kindness has so often been co-opted to mean something it is not. As a white woman who grew up in America, I was conditioned to be nice. We are taught to shrink ourselves, stay quiet, and not rock the boat.

Luckily for me, I had parents who allowed me the opportunity to take up space. When teachers called me too talkative, my parents viewed me as passionate. When I would argue with grown men about baseball stats at a game, they cheered on my enthusiasm. I also had the opportunity on more than one occasion to see my mom stand up for people. She kicked a friend out of our house for being racist. She stood up to people who were dehumanizing my uncle while he was dying of AIDS.

So, while society was conditioning me to maintain the status quo, my mom encouraged me to stand out and speak up. That is kindness. Letting people know that you won’t stand for racism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry is kindness. Fighting to dismantle systems that are set up to further marginalize people is kindness.

Staying quiet in the face of injustice is the exact opposite of kindness; it is harmful. Yet, there is a large group of people out there who equate kindness with silence. It is the "let’s not talk politics" crowd—the people who want to just "be kind" while expecting you to be okay with them voting to take rights away from others. It is unacceptable. Kindness should be rooted in justice and grounded in action.

Kindness is activism.

- Kaitlin