Conservative Revolutionary? The Necessity for Homeplace in Spaces of Resistance
“Black women around me made it easy because they were the only people who accepted me”- Nah Lekan Masego (He/They).
What is Homeplace?
Black women carry responsibility that seems to never shift in constructing an environment of self-acceptance, love, and unapologetic honesty for Black people. In a world that fights to reduce the Black body to a vessel, it can be hard to see past what sociologists would call the “looking-glass self” (Cooley, 1902). This term refers to the idea that a large part of our self-perception is influenced by the ways others see us. In a world that aims to exploit Black labor, exploit Black bodies, and pushes a Eurocentric agenda of Beauty, there is seldom any escape from the reminders of Blackness as a salient, and important part of one’s identity. bell hooks explained this phenomenon perfectly when illustrating a walk to her grandmother’s house in her younger years through a poor white neighborhood. hooks speaks of the looks of white faces signaling a lack of safety and belonging as she journeyed to the house, a feeling that only became relieved by the site of her grandmother’s front lawn; a safe-house from “the constant reminders of white power and control”.
hooks goes on to extol the efforts of Black women to maintain their own households despite the burdens of participating in laborious jobs, and maintaining white families they served historically as well; an effort that has gone largely unnoticed because of the assumed natural role women occupy to maintain a domestic space that is nurturing and caring. According to hooks, Black people have always maintained a radical political dimension to the homeplace. No matter what circumstances may surround someone outside, the homeplace began to become a place where one could “freely confront the issue of humanization, where one could resist.” This homeplace began to be formed by the tone of Black Woman inspiring audacity and unapologetic honesty with positive affirmation.
As hooks puts it, “Black women resisted by making homes where all Black people could strive to be subjects, not objects… where we could restore ourselves to dignity in the public world.” This effort from Black women to foster environments that allowed Black people to inspire their selfhood free from the ideas of oppression and subjugation played a significant role in nourishing the identities of Black individuals, and helping them work toward actualization. One could see how this begins to foster true resistance as the questions within families themselves and acceptance of the people that occupy these spaces as unapologetically Black as they’d like becomes instrumental to defying racism. Homeplace’s ability to provide this unapologetic space becomes absolutely necessary for revolutionary thinking, and actions to be effective and inclusive of the needs/experiences of all Black lives.
Homeplace in Resistance and Protests?
Homeplace is not just a space within the household. It is where the Black experience becomes validated, reassured, and positively reinforced no matter how unique. Today, Black women still are the most effective at providing these homeplaces as they are able to give Black people of all walks of life the acceptance that is necessary to feeling heard, appreciated, listened to, etc. The summer of 2020 revealed this phenomena more than ever as activists of all kinds came out to support the riots and protests that took place following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Nah Lekan Masego, a young, proud activist from Red Hook, Brooklyn sat down with me this week to speak about his experience as a Black gay man during the peak of the protests. In Brooklyn, the coffee-shop-making, corporation adding, white washing nature of gentrification has targeted and surrounded the vibrant, culturally diverse, melanated neighborhoods that we love so much. Masego has done much work around his community and those near to address the institutional racism that has plagued the Black and Brown residents of Brooklyn, New York far before COVID-19. On weekends, he volunteers at food banks, and during all of the protests I attended this summer with Masego, he was the last to leave from our group. Masego and I also led a group of talented youth in his area this summer in protesting, and organizing. Orchestrating the first ever rally against police brutality in Red Hook history.
While he is a loved and respected figure to those who are civically engaged in our neighborhood, the adaptable and unapologetic personality that makes Nah such a lovable leader is one that comes from a story of great rejection and rerouting.
Lekan, the Founder of the small organization called The New Black Liberated Queens and Kings, was quick to speak of the issues he experienced as a leading figure in collaboration with other organizations during this time:
“It’s weird because it’s like if you don’t show masculinity or any kind of ‘king of the jungle’ mentality, men in groups won’t take you seriously or they devalue your input. I wasn’t surprised though, this is always the way it goes with most of the men around me. I have friends who have no problem with me being gay, but they tell me all the time they’re cool because I’m ‘not like the others’ and I don’t ‘act’ gay. It makes it hard to feel like I can be myself around them.”
Following up, Lekan made sure to emphasize that Black women have always been much more welcoming, stating:
“Black women have always inspired me, loved me, and welcomed me to be myself more than any other group of people I’ve been around. I didn’t grow up with my mother, I grew up with my grandma who’s 68. Even when things become uncomfortable for her when I’m acting outside of gender barriers, she has always been sensitive to ask me about things, understand my perspective, and understand that gender is just different nowadays than it was before. That’s the magical thing about Black women is that they adjust, ask questions, correct themselves, and are able to let you be”.
Nah Lekan spoke about how this safe space and ability to come out was very important to his inspiration to become an activist, but that he has had to struggle to maintain this motivation in the face of the masculine environments that the protests organizers usually have. He recalled one experience where he was called out by another Black man for wearing his gay flag along with his Pan-African flag.
“He told me that it wasn’t the same fight; that it was completely different. I was just confused.. Like how can you say you want change for Black people as a whole, but try to silence someone’s truth and Black experience. Even within the gay community we are marginalized for our skin color”.
Lekan went on to explain how even in that emotional moment it was the Black women in his corner that kept him composed and encouraged him to keep going. I found these sentiments to be very telling about the ways to foster healthy environments for resistance. To have a unified cause that truly embodies the revolutionary ideas necessary to dismantling systemic oppression, there is internal work to be done by men and the organizations that come with them to avoid these types of unhealthy environments and be accepting of Blackness in all its shapes and forms.
Extending Homeplace
So here we are again, homeplace. While hooks uses this concept to explain the homes Black women create and its ability to help individuals form a sense of self away from social pressures, Black women foster a welcoming environment that goes beyond just the home, and provide this safety and welcomeness to all Black experiences no matter where they are. But this type of welcoming and healing attitude cannot be left solely to Black Women. Homeplace becomes a space where everyone can learn from, and apply some of these concepts outside of the house to foster a more united front. To have an effective resistance against the systemic racism that many of these small organizations aim to fight against, there becomes a need for an acknowledgement for the internalized patriarchy, homophobia, classism, etc that plagues many of the men at the head of these organizations.
We cannot expect a unified front of Black activists, creatives, workers, or anything for that matter until these principles come into work. While compassion, listening, nurture, and understanding have been historically assigned to women, this cannot be the case moving forward. The phrase Black Lives Matter applies to all Black lives, and with numbers the power of those who are fighting battles against the systemic racism of the United States will only continue to grow. These numbers are dependent, however, on unity.
Unity is only possible where there is authenticity, honesty, acceptance, and truth. Homeplace is the tool to foster this unity. However, to create the homeplace is not the job of Black women. While relatability to being marginalized may be a factor that contributes to why it seems easier for them to be accepting, we must realize that to dismantle or take steps toward dismantling systemic racism, the truth about the other issues that impact Black lives must be acknowledged. This will start when we make it our mission to embody the values homeplace gives us in these spaces of resistance. However, it will take a mix of both as the level of outness and truth spoken by Black people also depends on familial support. Overall, a fight of both bigger and smaller actors will be the biggest predictors of systemic change.
