After dedicating several free baton-twirling performances in front of her Central District home this last month to the Black Lives Matter movement, non-white neighbors of Kelsey Higgins are wondering if it might be time to take her performative allyship down a notch.
“Sure, it’s a nice gesture that she put up a Black Lives Matter sign and dedicates every performance she posts on social to the movement with hashtag #BLM,” said Teresa Hubbard, a mother of one of the last home-owning black families in the quickly gentrified neighborhood. “But sometimes it seems like all she’s doing is showing off a skill she hasn’t been able to use since halftime at her last college basketball game.”
Hubbard told Higgins today it might be time to bring less attention to herself and more to things like petitions for the murderers of Breonna Taylor and Elijah McClain to be charged and imprisoned.
“I just want people to know I’m not racist,” said Higgins, surprised she wasn’t being thanked for her performances. “I know there’s still a lot of racists out there and so it was very important to me that I stress I’m not racist. And because of that, I also don’t benefit from systemic racism or have any responsibility to take any of the uncomfortable actions necessary to dismantle it. I’ll be cheering all of you activists on from the sidelines though! Black Lives Matter!”
Although Hubbard has not quite convinced her to make a couple calls to the City Council, buy take-out from a black-owned restaurant, or read How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi, Higgins has since added to her front yard an “All Are Welcome Here” lawn sign.
