“We Use Our Voice”: Janaya Future Khan on Moving Forward From the Capitol Riots

Today, Khan shares with Vogue a meditation on the circumstances that allowed these horrific events to take place, as well as a path forward for activists. Importantly, Khan points out the lack of police presence at the Capitol this week, a fact that exposes, in their own words, “a clear double standard for how Black protestors have been treated over the past several years. What we know to be true is that there is a way that white rage is celebrated in this country and Black grief is criminalized.”

Photographed by Melodie McDaniel, Vogue, September 2020

For Khan, the response should be one that fully takes into account how we reached this point. “I’ve seen over and over again this idea that this is not America,” they add. “But my question is, what if it is? What if this is America? And what if the only way that we’re going to get through this thing is to actually name something [for] what it is. What if America is just as full of possibility as it is ugly, and the only way we get to decide which way it goes is if we actively weigh in?”

At the end of the day, Khan’s message is simple: to keep “using our voice,” as they note that this moment should be a reminder of just how urgent and powerful raising our voices—and elevating those which are suppressed—can be in the face of resistance and hate. “Things have been so tough and so ugly that some of us just want to shut down,” they continue, “but activism isn’t an invitation into sorrow, it’s an invitation into song. It’s a way that we use our voice, a way that we help shape the world and the society that we want to see, that we deserve, that we want to live in. When we see hate rear its ugly head, we will shut it down, we will speak it, we will name it [for] what it is. And we won’t be afraid to use our voice.”