#black cities

[onchillvybz]

[luvmesumus]

[wspj-blog]

“My City” Has Its Limits

by wspj  | 5:58P EST |02.02.16| Filed to: “Why Lord...”

“Bruh, you’re not from Chicago, you’re from Evanston!” (which is across the street)

I saw this video when it first went up and now people are passing it around because it is on the surface funny. But in the age of Trump threatening to send a federal paramilitary into urban centers where he thinks things are “out of control” (imagine the irony of Trump calling anything or anyone out of control), as if places like Detroit and Chicago are not already under the deadly grips of federally funded and militarized police forces puts “funny” into perspective. If you’re tempted to pass this video around for laughs, consider the following:

First of all, you're spreading a video of a token Black conservative Pro-Trump Republican strategist, Gianno Caldwell, shutting down activist, Richard Fowler, who criticized Trump’s reckless threat to the people of Chicago, on the basis that he (Caldwell) is from "the South Side" as if the South Side is the only place Black people in Chicago live. On FOX News, no less, Caldwell’s boisterous “bruh” reeks of a performance for a White-wing audience, all to rebuff legitimate critiques of federal-level intrusion.  

After all, Richard Fowler lives in Evanston (across the street), so how dare he speak on Chicago in national politics? Right? But somehow Trump can speak with authority about what Chicago needs. Sure, maybe Fowler should have said “I’m from right outside of Chicago” or “I work in Chicago” but it’s funny how this particular phrasing is only demanded to win arguments. Whenever Chicagoans want to brag, bringing up the likes of films like “Home Alone” or “Ferris Bueller”, or a rapper who lives in the suburbs, then all of a sudden the “Chicago-proper-only” rule goes out the window.

Second, in general, folks should stop saying that Black folks from the near suburbs aren't living the Black Chicago experience.

Many of the same people who are quick to tell Black people from near suburbs that they aren’t from Chicago wouldn't walk around the South Suburbs, or Bellwood, or Maywood, or West Evanston with that iPhone 7 at night. Tragically, they’re bagging bodies and “doing numbers” in the ‘Burbs all the same; we all know it. The “Wild 100s” go well beyond Chicago’s city limits and they aren’t called wild for nothing. Suburban cops are driving around in repainted CPD cruisers with the same heavy-handed tactics as the CPD itself. So we need to stop being petty and be real when the conversations are serious. If you live across the street from Rogers Park, you're very possibly more in touch with reality than if you live in Ravenswood or live in a Kenwood mansion. So stop it.

For decades now, since the rise of a neoliberal economic and social policy, as public housing was shutdown and neighborhoods leveled for developments, Black people have displaced from their homes in Chicago and many have forced to moved to suburbs. Many have been displaced by the mere threat of violence and attempts on their lives. Denying the common experience of Black people in a region only helps to isolate us and minimize the racist policies of regional governments and minimize the injustices that we are struggling to end.

Stop defending "[our/my/your] city" and policing the conceptual boundaries of cities/countries—and all spaces that are defined by the state and its violence—as if anything has ever been done in the name of a City as a municipal entity that was meant to protect or uplift Black people. Obviously, its great to proud of your community and the spaces that we claim for ourselves, for our dreams, for our loved ones. But if our cities (as political entities) defended us the way we defend their imagined, conceptual boundaries, we wouldn’t be repeating the same discussion about crime, poverty, and social and political pain all the time. 

[coffy22]

Black Americans: American West, Cowboys & Towns Part 2

Black Americans: American West, Cowboys & Towns Part 2

Eatonville: The Oldest Black Town in America One correction; Eatonville ‘ISN’T’ the first Black town, there were many during and before slavery as well.

History’s Lost Black Towns

Rosewood: Rediscovering an almost forgotten past

Seneca Village, N.Y.: Taking a Stroll…

View On WordPress

[sincerely-ignorant]

Black Americans: American West, Cowboys & Towns Part 2

Black Americans: American West, Cowboys & Towns Part 2

Eatonville: The Oldest Black Town in America One correction; Eatonville ‘ISN’T’ the first Black town, there were many during and before slavery as well.

History’s Lost Black Towns

Rosewood: Rediscovering an almost forgotten past

Seneca Village, N.Y.: Taking a Stroll…

View On WordPress

[blackartcity]

STEFFANI JEMISON & BLACK UTOPIA

If we can understand the Great Migration at the turn of the 20th century as a radical spatial imaginary, through this lens, the Black city can be framed as an active collective imagining of utopia. A Black utopia, the pursuit of black humanity and economic growth, a presaged us-ness as full citizens of this America.

The Great Migration, like Reconstruction and contemporary post-racial politics, embodied the promise of America’s benevolence, staging the Black city to fall short of its deliverance of a Black utopia. Fostering a calamity of hope akin to the preacher man’s unholy repetition, “Just Hold On My Brothers and Sisters! A change is sure to come!” As Isabel Wilkerson explains, migration from the south, “... grew out of the unmet promises made after the Civil War and, through the sheer weight of it, helped push the country toward the civil rights revolutions of the 1960s.” And still, fifty years after the Civil Rights Movement, America has sustained its legacy of racial dystopia, inciting another generation to proclaim their humanity in protest. Will the inconvenience and backlash of Black rage further stagnate the road towards truth and accountability for America and her future?

CONTINUE READING THE ESSAY HERE

Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series (Panel One) - 1941 Caption “During the World War there was a great migration North by Southern Negroes”

[thepinkjinx]

I just realized something..

that I guess I shouldn't get so upset bout white people getting so scared at the concept of going to Detroit. Cause it's sort of like me, innocent little black girl, somehow ending up in some all white, confederate flag waving, hick town in the depths of Mississippi/Alabama (bka deep, country, pro-white south). Except I don't have the privilege of people fighting for me if I get hurt.