I was relatively quiet during Black History Month, because I realized I didn’t need to be as loud.

Loud about making sure Black Lives Matter and even Black history. 

You know, because we live in a world where power companies ruin lives, but have time to make Black history posts on social media.

When LinkedIN (and so many other corporate logos) were the colors of the Pan-African flag, but the actual Black and African people were routinely silenced and shadowbanned during one of the most important liberation movement moments in our lifetime.

When Audre Lorde is the Google Doodle on her birthday (that she shares with Toni Morrison and my paternal grandmother), but that same company proved her point that the masters tools can’t dismantle the masters house, when a Stanford-educated, award-winning  contemporary Black woman employee that they asked to challenge them on equity, gets fired because of a hot email. 

I think that’s exactly why I’ve been quiet this month, relatively. Because we are in need of hot, piping emails. 

Like this one.

Because I grieve and I mourn that all this equity we’ve gotten so enamored with lately, is honestly just seats at the table and check boxes, and clout chasing, and not restitution and reparations and co-conspiritorship and healing.

Because I never knew that my grandmother was born on the same day as Audre and Toni. She died in a cloud of trauma 11 years before I was born and I’ve only ever seen two pictures of her.

Yet, in those pictures, I still saw a woman who despite everything she lived though up until those points, she had a quiet dignity. 

I was told by my dad and his siblings that her table was never empty and if someone needed a bite to eat, there was always one at her house. Much like my maternal grandmother, who’s also recently set up an eternal kitchen on the other side, leaving us to the memory of the physical one that never closed and didn’t cost anything to drop in.

It’s on the strength of my grandmothers who knew how to create spaces in spite of the deepest days of segregation and Jim Crow, who broke barriers (my maternal grandmother was one of the first Black cafeteria managers in Alamance County, NC), that I have sought to make this a space where other Black womyn, and Black queer, trans and non-binary folks, can be at home, both in the active built environment and land use industry and period, in those communities that have been created by those spaces.

I want to first thank the 23 Black womyn-identified folks who took my survey last year, as well as those of you who fall under the Black womyn-identified, trans, queer and nonbinary community from this year’s survey (and especially those who took it twice). You sharing this information will make it better for all of us. I will be digging deeper into those answers, especially with the pandemic and its effects. I’ll also be reaching out to you later this year for some focus groups (that will be paid!).

Secondly, allies and accomplices who got access to the survey this year, your opinions have been especially valuable as I compare and contrast perception of what spaces are friendly to us as Black queer people, and especially those of us women/femme identified. A couple of you highlighted how as non-Black POC, there are still disparities in how you’re treated and how your neighborhoods are fairing. Plus, you helped put several metro areas higher on the list of myself and Les’s rankings of our personal happy places. Here are those metro areas listed in alphabetical order:

Atlanta

Chicago

Dallas-Fort Worth

Detroit

Los Angeles

New York (Tri-State)

Philadelphia

Piedmont Triad, NC (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point)

Pittsburgh

Research Triangle, NC (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary)

San Francisco Bay Area (Oakland, Silicon Valley)

Minneapolis/ St. Paul

Washington, DC (inclusive of Northern Virginia, and the adjacent Maryland Counties)

I know deep in my heart that this list is incomplete. These cities listed above have at least 100,000 Black woman-identified people. Several of you passed our personal likes tests, but you have less than 100,000 Black women. Know that we’ll be calling up those of you who reped and campaigned really hard for us to move to your smaller cities. And I know Baltimore, New Orleans, Charlotte and Birmingham can check all these boxes, but I only had one or none responses, so based on this very small sample of folks, this is where we are.

So head over to the main survey and  please keep sharing(or come back and finish)  because I know some of these metro areas do have those spaces and some of you who haven’t had a chance to share do have the keys to that information. Also, Black woman-identified and non-binary femme folks, the orginal survey is open and I would love to get your open-ended answers on our personal “happy place” questions and include you in that paid focus group if you’re interested.

Oh, and the contest winner has received a separate message from me, with information on how to claim their prize.

Finally, those of you who are in The Black Queer Feminist Urbanist School pilot have a new lesson from a slightly hidden, but very relevant historical figure, Mary Ann Shadd Cary. 

Plus, for those of you in the Mighty Networks pilot and who are pledged at at least the $10 level on Patreon will be treated to a conversation with the authors of Retrofitting Suburbia, Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Wilkerson, that we will be recording next week and releasing towards the middle of the month, to honor Women’s History Month and to continue our everyday celebration of Black History Month. 

Those of you subscribed at the new Public Lecture level(and who are in our special BIPOC community on Mighty Networks)  will get new interviews like this, a deep dive into my survey methodology(also coming later in March) and instant access to old podcast episodes.

You’ll also be supporting the creation of spaces where being unapologetically Black and woman-identified and/or queer, trans and nonbinary are joys and culture adds, not a nuisance.

Because we are a wildfire. Not of destruction, but of live-giving energy.

Roaring into March like the lions we are.

Thanks for being here and I’m happy I can be here for you,

Kristen