Stop Having Kids Is Racist Refuted

People have accused SHK of being racist, but we have never discriminated against or targeted any specific group of humans who have a specific skin color or anything else. The communities we have organized outreach events in have ranged from diverse neighborhoods to predominantly white neighborhoods. We don’t pick our locations based on the racial demographics of who lives there– we like to go where there is a lot of foot traffic or where a lot of eyes will see our message. We are a small group of volunteers and are unable to travel everywhere, so we encourage those who would like to see this message in their community or country to start their own local outreach group. (For a recent example, antinatalists in India started a local group in Kolkata in May 2022.)

SHK encourages everyone everywhere to boycott procreation, to prioritize existing life, and to think critically about the implications of bringing someone into existence. Antinatalists come in all shapes, sizes and colors. There are many non-white antinatalists out there who shouldn’t be erased by the incorrect notion that antinatalism is a white-specific belief system. Like any system of values, there will be people of all “races” who disagree with our message, but that doesn’t mean our message is racist.

We are happy to have a varied demographic in our volunteers at SHK. Yet during outreach demos, we’ve often heard people accuse us of targeting “people of color,” while ignoring the lived experiences and opinions of the “people of color” who are volunteering with us. We’ve also been accused of being anti-white even though nothing in our messaging or actions is specific to any white or non-white people.

Antinatalism and SHK aren’t discriminatory; we assign a negative value to birth regardless of the color of skin someone is born with. This is a message directed to every human, a message that, thankfully, humans of all shades of color can get behind.