This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week we taking a breath on our first leg of what Kristen is calling the Wish Journey of 2022 and she really appreciates you supporting this one, because the year is still going and it’s not too late to fund our journey. Read on and learn more and please share!
Data is facts. Love is a fact. Abundance is a fact. Liberation is a fact. Conflict is a fact. Injustice and justice are facts. And if all of the above are facts, then they can be data.
One of the first facts we face each calendar year, is that on December 31, at 11:59, within 60 seconds, it’s automatically January first. Even in a time where it feels like the same year has been going on for almost two years. Even in my own personal warp of five years of building a solo business and learning more about who I am as a person. And even if you follow a totally different set of time measures, if you even follow time at all — the circle of life does move on.
At the end of this calendar year, I intend to release one of the largest data projects I’ve undertaken — The Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Index. And as I mentioned last week, I’m tackling a few extra questions as well, but if you’ve been keeping up with my work for a long time, you know that those questions aren’t completely of track of questions I ask myself when considering whether a place is sufficient for Black Queer Feminist Urbanists like myself.
Even when you’re doing social science work, people often favor numbers and charts and maps, over actual people’s feelings. But, while not all feelings may be “true” or “correct”, they are occurring and they are someone’s fact.
I also tire of the erasure and the lack of centering that statistics have over marginalized populations. Marginalization is an idea rooted in the inability of people and communities to show up properly in data collection and analysis and that has to change.
First, We all have the capability of calculators/computers in our hands, even if our homes don’t have running water or steady electrical power, even if we are connected to tubes in a hospital bed, isolated from all that we know, unsure if we will come out of those rooms alive.
Secondly, Long before we had computers to compute these percentages and to crunch our numbers into graphics almost instantly, we had these hand-drawn, but quite detailed “infographics” of W.E.B. DuBois from over a century ago. One appears to be a spiral with different sections representing different things. Another is a histogram with the percentages clearly spread out. For the liberation of Black people globally. He would also face persecution for demanding so many things be liberated and ethical and restored when it came to Black lives.
And just before press time, I was greeted with this tweet, which was affirming especially as so many of you and others ask me why I’m adamant that I do this work, not under the auspices of an academic institution, but in fair and just partnership, with the wisdom and data analysis of our ancestors, elders and peers leading the way. Similar to Dr. Timnit Gebru and the collective of other Black-led data organizations to continue our quest for de-marginalziation and liberation.
That’s what I’m taking with me this year. Even when people try to keep us from the facts, sharing the facts, being the facts, the facts must be shared and sharing facts is an act of love.
So, in case you missed it in the last email, this year in these emails, recordings and throughout the site, I’m tackling these four questions first:
Why I Believe Transit Fares Can Be Obsolete
Why I Center the Black Press
Why I Believe Our Community Centers Can Do More
How I Intend to Heal My Personal Shame from Government/Professional Failure
I said last week that I was going to go headfirst in to the transit analysis and I originally thought that I would tackle one question a month, re assess, then do more questions. Still kinda true.
However, I decided to take time to finally learn things like R, Python and properly using things like Excel and Tableau to tell these stories and present this information.
Unfortunately, I do have to take formal academic classes to do so, but I’m doing this in a self-paced Coursera program, where I can access all kinds of classes from all kinds of places and learn the tools I need, leave the rest and start crafting more tools.
That way, when its time to drop the main index at the end of the year, not only can you see how existing measures and the time that it takes to go through the existing process of doing analytics/research fail Black Queer Feminist Urbanists, you can see how the measures I and others similar to me craft are bringing for the liberation and de-marginalziation needed.
Your help both in the capital campaign, which is still open and with monthly pledges has helped not only with keeping the web hosting going, keeping this email list paid and helping me with the video editing so I can consistently show up, with captions on the fast-growing video platforms, you’re also helping me better educate myself so I can make this platform what I’ve dreamed it would be, a comprehensive resource for Black urbanists though, especially at its intersection with queer/trans life and feminism.
Thank you so much for being here and Happy New Year!
Before You Go
— I’ve been feeling global solidarity with all Black/African peoples, especially those who recognize the full spectrum of gender. It’s also been illuminating to see calls for reparations globally and how other countries like Canada, that are assumed to be “innocent”, have legacies of enslavement and discrimination and displacement of their own. While I may have started my life’s journey in the United States, my ancestors and elders have a rich history worldwide.
— The grief I’ve held last year, having to attend funerals and weddings from afar, as well as having fluctuations in business and mood has been a lot. I’m just as thankful as many for nights going to bed with the Golden Girls in the background and I had to take a moment, especially now that Betty White and my grandmother will share a transition to the ancestors day, to say something about that.
— I’m reclaiming my roots, proudly, little by little and reading this piece on how Black people of marginalized gender continue to reclaim country music is uplifting.
Until next time,