Welcome back to The Black Urbanist Weekly. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m currently producing this weekly digital newsletter on my site, via email and various other places, to share my thoughts, my Black, Spiritual, Southern, Working-Class, Educated, Queer, Femme thoughts on how places and communities work. Think of this as my weekly column, sitting on your proverbial print paper’s editorial page or as so many other of your favorite newsletters do, in your inbox.
This week’s edition is #18 and this is the next email in my series “And That’s What Time It Is”. This week, I’m telling my home state North Carolina what time it is. Next week, Kansas City and finally on the last Friday of this month, it will be the Baltimore and DC region. Yes, the whole thing. Get ready. Before we get started, a few announcements:
This will be a weekends-only newsletter for at least the next few months while I’m on a full-time contract. Look for the newsletter as early as Friday night and as late as Sunday evening.
If you’ve tried to email me or reply back any time after December 27, I’ve found out that my email boxes through Bluehost have had issues connecting with Gmail. In the meantime, you can always reach me and the team at theblackurbanist@gmail.com and feel free to reply back to this email or email again if you still would like to reach us. I’ll update you when @theblackurbanist.com emails are back up.
You all really seemed to respond well to the new job board updates! I’m glad that I can be a help.
For a limited time, you will still be able to post jobs and opportunities for free Go here to post a job and go here to post a scholarship, fellowship, grant or request for proposal.
Also, you can place an ad of any kind, like an old school classified, in my Before You Go Section. Reply back (if you’re reading the email) or email theblackurbanist@gmail.com, with your budget and we will set a rate for you. Coming soon, an advertising-specific page.
You can always pledge monthly as an individual via Patreon or send me a one time donation via Venmo.
And now, what time it is for North Carolina.
And That’s What Time It Is, Part 3: For North Carolina to Be Rather than To Seem
Esse quam videri
That’s our North Carolina state motto. It translates “To be, rather than to seem”. Those words have been our state motto since 1893.
The more I reflect on those particular Latin words, I feel like that’s what embodies so many of my fellow North Carolinians— both native and transplant, in the diaspora and on the homefront.
However, we still have to be careful that we don’t seem as much as we be.
Thomas Wolfe famously said in his posthumously published 1940s novel You Can’t Go Home Again about his fictionalized, but very much Asheville of the early 20th century:
“They had squandered fabulous sums in meaningless streets and bridges. They had torn down ancient buildings and erected new ones large enough to take care of a city of half a million people. They had leveled hills and bored through mountains, making magnificent tunnels paved with double roadways and glittering with shining tiles — tunnels which leaped out on the other side into Arcadian wilderness. They had flung away the earnings of a lifetime, and mortgaged those of a generation to come. They had ruined their city, and in doing so had ruined themselves, their children, and their children’s children.”
Caveat. I did enjoy driving through the mountain tunnels for their novelty when I was in Asheville over the summer, but I could get to downtown just as well on the bypass that went over the valley. I’m well aware both roads have been the cause of much controversy and so do others today.
Every city in our state is wrestling with gentrification, which in this case I mean not being able to afford places, some of which had gone through a sharp drop in value not more than ten years prior. That also continues the charge of cultural erasure, some of which had started as early as integration and urban renewal, and mutated as we went through de-industrialization and the technology boom.
I feel that the struggle in Raleigh was what prompted Octavia Raineyin the Trinagle-based alt-weekly Indy Week’s 2040 predictions section to predict that black people in the City of Raleigh proper, which is at the moment 144.8 square miles and knocks on the door of every city it’s next to, would no longer have a black population.
Yeah, whew.
Meanwhile, in the same article on Raleigh, Carly P. Jones, a singer, arts administrator for the State of North Carolina and cultural activist, and also a woman of color, has hope that the Triangle (and the state) will continue to grow their arts community, a hope I share, as I admire the work she had a hand in with Come Hear NC and seeing so many musicians make it big outside of the state and still have their eyes on home.
The Durham in the 2040s black commentators had similar things to say, but in a way that was true to the city they call home. Alexis Pauline Gumbs wrote a very Earthseedy reflection of how we came back to ourselves and how we managed to create and listen in the midst of climate challenges. Thomasi McDonald spoke of the need to practice Sankofa, the West African principle of going back and collecting what you’ve lost before you move forward. Specifically, Durham needed to reckon with urban renewal fully, before being able to ensure that we would be better in 2040.
So many of the other Indy Week future predictors though that we can just build and park and transit our way into a future where everything is equal. However, without considering what makes up our soul and manifests through our culture and our care for each other, this kind of building will be doing what seems right, instead of doing what is right.
I already addressed my wishes for North Carolina. But this is my heart. May we continue to centralize our services, create affirming spaces to cultivate spiritual connections and create and adore the culture that makes us who we are.
Next week, everything’s modern in Kansas City. So what time is it really?
Other Things On My Mind
I grew up going to McDonalds once a week for a Happy Meal, and knew of several black franchise owners, but looking forward to digging into this book and learning more about how this was a corporate plan to ensure Happy Meal loyal would grow up to become Big Mac and McFlurry loyal.
I would have loved to grow up though with this book highlighting North Carolina’s black history from A to Z.
And finally, to my fellow Black Americans who can. Take Martin Luther King Day off and participate in service if you want to, but not because you have to.
Before You Go
—Check out this week’s job board. You can submit jobs here. Additionally, there are two job and opportunity seeking and posting centered Patreon support levels.
—Check out Kristpattern on Instagram and DM me if you’re interested in anything for sale over there. It’s not too late to get one of the cards from the Les’s Lighthouse collection and they’re great for helping you or a friend turn your wishes into reality in 2020.
— Book me for a lecture, workshop or both.
—Les, my wonderful life partner and sales director, is great at hyping you up, making you laugh and helping you or your organization make radical changes in your life and health. In fact, you can join her in her Facebook group and her email list where she’s doing a 30 Day Manifestation and Wisdom Challenge to help us get ready to do well in 2020.
—Don’t forget to check out my mentee’s Rashida Green’s podcast which also discusses environmental issues from a black woman’s perspective. You can listen to me talk about some of North Carolina’s more notorious environmental issues and the political culture on this episode.
— Advertise your conference, event, project or something else right here in this Before You Go section. Reply back to this email and we will be in touch with rates based on your budget. Or, become an individual monthly supporter via Patreonor send me a one-time Venmo.
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