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.
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This is Edition #19 and I am continuing my series called “And That’s What Time It Is”, by asking if everything is really “up to date” in Kansas City.
The series title comes from a saying that my dad used to use after making a bold statement. I’ve used the statement to ask and declare the following this past month:
–To make more quality media.
–To make more inclusive and safe spaces, especially for black women in urbanism.
–For my home state of North Carolina to live up to it’s state motto and to be rather than to seem.
And this week, I’m saying that it’s time to get up to date in Kansas City.The post title alludes to the Rogers and Hammerstein song “Everything’s Up-to-Date in Kansas City” from their musical “Oklahoma”.
Next week, I’ll have a similar mandate for the Baltimore/Washington region and the next couple of months will be newsletters themed around love and chance.
If you would like to support this newsletter financially, you can do so by becoming an individual monthly supporter via Patreon or send me a one-time Venmo. You can also purchase a classified ad in my Before You Go section. Send me and my sales team an email at theblackurbanist@gmail.com and we will get right back to you.
One more announcement before we jump into this week’s letter, we are still working on getting our @theblackubanist.com email boxes sorted out from them suddenly not working at the end of 2019. Please continue to be patient with us and feel free to reply back to this email or email us directly at theblackurbanist@gmail.com if you want to reach me or the team for bookings, advertisements, questions with the job board or to say hello and thanks!
And now, onward to talk about how everything is and isn’t up-to-date in Kansas City.
And That’s What Time It Is Part 4— Is Everything Really Up-to-Date In Kansas City?
I hope so. No, I know so.
And I put that on one line because I don’t want those of you who read this letter and we crossed paths in my brief time in Kansas City to think this is just going to be a drag.
When I moved to KC in 2015, I was still in deep personal turmoil. I was very much still in the more violent points of grieving my father, who had just passed in 2013. I felt like I couldn’t meet certain gender and sexual expectations and I wasn’t fully out to my own self as to how I was different, besides in general not feeling like the “modern Southern Belle” that I was supposed to be.
Myself and my dear 2002 Honda Accord were in the drive-thru lines at Biscuitville every morning and the Stamey’s on what’s now Gate City Boulevard across from the coliseum in the evenings, drowning out my sorrows in my favorite comfort foods.
On Fridays for dinner, the Mayflower calabash seafood restaurant got thrown in that mix.
I’d been fired from my previous job with a prominent architecture firm and I was back living at home, with this platform and feeling miserable. And yes, in a romantic relationship, but there were missing links there too.
I’m including this analysis of my mental state prior to moving to KC, because I want anyone reading to understand that physical design doesn’t always save folks, even some of your favorite urbanists, from feeling some kind of way about how life is going.
Granite countertops can’t stop people from falling out of love in marriages. Shiny new playgrounds don’t always keep kids from experiencing all kinds of violence.
So many of you did your best to help me heal, thrive and grow in KC. And guess what, you did, even though my journey meant that I had to continue to journey and I needed to land in other places, pick up new things and fall in the kind of love that i’m in at the moment in this very place.
There’s a lot that’s going right in Kansas City and that the best thing to do, if you are an urbanist, activist, concerned citizen or even now a member of the KC diaspora, is to continue to check-in and evaluate where our greater mental state is. Check in on yourself, your family, your congregants, your citizens, your staff, check-in on everyone.
So many of you who I knew and knew of during my time in KC are doing bigger and better things that we were doing when I started my portion of this journey with you almost five years ago.
We’re sitting in the KCMO mayor’s office and on the city council. We are joining boards, committees, even staffs that we weren’t privy to in the past. We are taking over new and old pulpits and sacred spaces and injecting the kind of affirming life we need. We’re developing storefronts and stadiums and podcasts in all corners of the city and honoring our ancestors wildest dreams.
We are leading the country in asking and acting on how we can better provide transit services to all people. I felt really sad when I walked away from my bike/ped work and I’m really pleased to see my former organization continue to speak out, not just for bike issues, but pedestrian issues in all neighborhoods of the metro.
We’re being spotlighted on several national TV shows and we may have a recent Super Bowl win to add to our World Series pennant (seriously, cannot wait to see the city turn as red as it was blue back in 2015). Our NPR station continues to be one of the best in the country and their own series on the state of KC is not to be missed.
However, what’s sadly also up-to-date, are the problems with violence, gentrification, poverty and access to business capital, racism, trans and homo phobias that every city is facing and that the entire KC metro is facing in its own way along with everyone else.
The rents are higher. People are still dying, both from illness and from gunfire. The K-12 school situation is still a maze of districts and desires and classism and racism. We are two states, with many local jurisdictions outside of the schools, with all kinds of administrative and political views and ideas. We are getting that new airport, but I hope it’s both unique to the region and friendly to travelers. I can’t ignore what happened around the MLK/Paseo renaming, but I understand that it was complicated in a very specific way.
Every metro region confronts and faces issues differently. And yes, they all still hurt and harm, but in different ways, that don’t always have easy answers.
I think, just like everywhere I’ve lived and live, what wins out at the end of the day, is keeping it real, and listening especially to the concerns and the solutions of the most marginalized.
Yes, we are up-to-date and I’m due for yet another visit back. But, before then, I’m turning my eye next week to my current metro area, one that was always the apple in my eye, but like everywhere else, has a few sour apples rotting. More on what time it is for the Baltimore/Washington region, next week.
Other Things On My Mind
We need to break up real estate firms like the one those Oakland women were battling for the right to purchase the home they occupied last month at an affordable price. Thankful they can now purchase it, but we need to go beyond that and question how we let real estate become what it’s become. We must keep working on ensuring that everyone can have a home and a place to do their life’s best work. And acknowledging that so long ago, lands were stolen and people were enslaved in this country and we continue to steal and enslave in so many different, but just as destructive, ways.
I do agree that transit is systemically sexist, but it’s also systematically racist. And I hope that efforts to fix the sexism don’t fall into the bad intersection of creating safety efforts that turn around and marginalize others unnecessarily.
And finally, I like that this Transit Center report was explicit in evaluating that Nashville’s transit referendum failed by not having proper African-American support and buy-in. Once again, another lesson that far too many cites need to learn if they really expect to grow, without loss of culture or even citizenry.
Before You Go
—Check out this week’s job board. Submit your jobs with this online form.
—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.
— Email theblackurbanist@gmail.com for information on advertising on The Black Urbanist platform as an nonprofit organization, conference or event, institution or agency. Or, become an individual monthly supporter via Patreon or send me a one-time Venmo.
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