I envision the idea of activism as acts necessarily encompassing many things. Unfortunately, in the case of Black activism, race alone is commonly centralized. It is difficult to argue against the evidence that indicates that many injustices faced by people of African descent in particular have much to do with how race has been historically constituted. In particular, I am very concerned with the ways those who are deemed as “racial others” frequently find themselves physically sequestered in public as well as private spaces (such as Black churches, Black neighborhoods, prisons, and militaries). I am also deeply concerned about the ways being sequestered into places that are commonly underfunded, helps to paint a more clear picture of the multiple ways inequality, traveling along the axis of race, is perpetuated in society.
Though race, race as a social construct, racial inequality, racial injustices (social, political, medical, intellectual), racism and racists take a great deal of energy from Black activists, other systems of power that intersect with axis of race are commonly and summarily denied Black activists’ intellectual attention. For example, the ways that gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, religious oppression, and the popular cultural tendency towards a celebratory anti-intellectualism amongst young Blacks specifically must be considered as forming additional formidable axes between multiple power structures which intersect with race; but, these issues are frequently identified as secondary to the primary issue of race. As I perceive the situation, there is an ongoing failure of Black activists to acknowledge and/or address the constant concomitant relationships between race, gender, class, sexual orientation, literacy, national identity and so much more, as always important. I believe this failure leads to a critically blind racial politic that achieves less than possible for so many additional and equally important issues remain under critiqued. In short, Black activism that can not form a platform to support the “others” within spaces and places identified as Black simply can not make a long term, hence, meaningful difference for any members inside of or outside of the racial group.
I understand and see these shortcomings starkly through the lens provided me by the vantage point of my particular social standpoint which is to say my pedagogical platform is comprised of those very things that I find to be missing, generally speaking, in the most popular of Black activists circles. Gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, religious oppression, and institutional places where Blacks are concentrated such as churches, the military, prison system, and the very bottom of educational institutions, have all shaped and informed my life and inevitably inform my intellectualism. I believe Black activists must develop strategies to engage social issues such as citizenship, disability, veterans issues, literacy, national identity, and must also strive to develop strategies to combat rampant anti-intellectualism amongst Black youth in particular. This being the case, all of these issues (and so much more) represent the ways I elect to pursue social justice on multiple fronts as a Queer Black Feminist Activist.
Black activism, if it is to survive and be meaningful in the generations to come, must create a politic capable of going beyond race based issues; otherwise it will, on its own, render its already stunted growth politic permanently politically obsolete. In short, I will argue that given the "new racism" facing people of color, the mere conceptualization of Black activism needs to grow up so that it may actually provide a conceptual land map to help those disenfranchised by “disempowering” intersecting axes of power.
With a mature Black activist platform, those most vulnerable may be educated on the things necessary to form brave counter tactics for enhancing not just the odds of political and social survival, but also by creating conditions whereby those constructed as “others” within spaces identified as Black may also thrive in territories disguised as friendly but upon closer inspection indicate hostile conditions – higher education for example. This is a call for Black activist and their allies to “queer” the political paradigm of racial politics and take seriously the compassion necessary to cohesively merge the personal with the political thereby increasing the strength and agility of all types of activism. All difference matter and regardless of how personal any of these things are, it’s all political.
[For more on the "new racism" see Patricia Hill Collins' Black Sexual Politics (2004) and From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism (2006).]
