This is a special preview edition of The Black Urbanist Daily. The Black Urbanist Daily will feature Kristen’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every weekday. Expect these to appear in your inbox after work hours, but be ready for you to read first thing in the morning. Want to keep receiving these after the pilot period ends on November 19? Pledge here at any level. Today, I’m thinking about Election Day as a Black politically engaged feminine person.
Remember when I wrote this post about being a hometown heroine? It’s because I too dream(ed) of joining the ranks of Black women (ok, to be technical in my case, genderqueer/nonbinary femme) in elected office.
However, at the moment, I see key barriers to me being able to fit into that mold. That was the spirit of my recent tweet thread reacting to the recent New York Times article on the 8 current Black woman mayors and a few potential women who will serve as mayors.
Why am I so skeptical? First of all, every city mentioned still has a very active and very violent police force. These mayors have the authority to reconfigure budgets, but their hands are tied because there are far more people in the electorate that want traditional policing than those that do not.
Secondly, it was mentioned in that article that Black women learned how to be civic-minded because of their sororities, which was very offensive.
Because we have to fight for our very existence on a regular basis, many of us come out of wombs ready to fight. Some of us have our first battles to be seen and loved in our own families. Then it’s on to churches and schools and these very governmental institutions that raise us to the top.
This also erases the women activists and community builders who spend their work lives at a job that doesn’t require college education and makes you ineligible for many of our Black sororities because you don’t have a bachelor’s degree.
I’m a firm believer that it shouldn’t take straightening one’s hair, paying an organizational fee and pledging love and devotion to a god who looks like a white man and the whiteness that image represents and bears down on its followers in order to be seen as a human.
Until that day comes when that’s not required for Black women (and nonbinary folks) to be and STAY mayors (and honestly any elected leader), then I’m not interested in the role.
By the time you get this, you may have a new governor, mayor, municipal council, school board, judges or some other official that’s elected over appointed.
You may have decided that you want to do policing differently or to allow yourself to be taxed for better schools or transit.
And I hope that you’ll consider, especially if you voted for a Black woman for any office, what it will truly mean for you to support her to be yourself. And I hope that when you did or didn’t reject that tax increase, that you have a better plan for providing those services to marginalized communities.
And so that’s the one thing that’s been on the top of my mind today. Before you go, a few reminders.
— Watch the launch keynote of the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Summit/Festival. This special event is why I’m emailing you daily, since we can’t be in person this year and I wanted to make the conference truly portable.
— Register for our special virtual movie screening, The Dominance of Motherhood, next Monday at 7 pm Eastern. (thanks to our generous donors and sponsors of this year’s summit, it’s free, scroll down to the HealthWeek ticket and you’ll get access). We will also stream this on all of our channels, but we will be taking down the livestream at the conclusion of the documentary, to allow the filmmakers to show the film at other festivals.
— Pledge at any level here to get these newsletters after November 19th.
—Black LGBTQIA+ Siblings — let’s talk one-on-one about life, urbanism and thriving. Send me a private message here and we can set up a time. Also, I’ve lifted the all-access fee for the summit, thanks to more generous donors!
Coming tomorrow — another reflection, and more information about Kristpattern Art Class, and the reboot of my Patreon-only podcast Public Lecture with Kristen Jeffers. And if you don’t want to be here anymore, scroll all the way down and unsubscribe.