Blackness.

Mural of Shephard Fairey print in Denver. Photo by Shelby Ireland @cannabeeecreative, courtesy of UnSplash.

Race has long been understood to be a social construction. Many mistakenly take this to mean race does not exist. Rather, as a racial category, blackness is not a biological fact, but it is constantly created by large and small individual actions in our society. Blackness as we know it has been produced over time.

There is no stable definition of blackness. Throughout our history in the US, we have created and defended many laws that defined who would be considered black and who would be considered white based on family ancestry. These definitions do not operate as fact and are not globally accepted. In two different nations, who is understood as “black” can be different, and who is considered as black can change over time as well. What it means to be black, as with many other racial identities in the US, has shifted over time and place.

What is Blackness?

In our present moment,

we can refer to several different uses for blackness, including blackness in popular culture as shaping what is deemed “cool”, blackness as a celebration of resistance, and even blackness associated with sickness. Each meaning of Blackness has a specific history, and those we have listed are certainly not the only association we have with blackness or black people in the US. With this project we are connecting people to archives and information in order to learn more about black identity—in particular across the regions from which black people are migrating to Texas and the Gulf Coast.

When we refer to Blackness, we also implicitly refer to the intersectional factors that create the living conditions of Black people. These intersectional factors include gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and citizenship. The factors also include “access to” and “exclusion from” services and institutions which a society offers. These services and institutions include educational and job training, affordable housing and healthcare services, and even services like transportation.

Intersectionality

What is anti-blackness?

Scholars use the term “anti-black” to refer to society’s “inability to recognize black humanity.” In other words, anti-blackness refers to the actual policies which restrict and degrade black people’s access to employment, housing, food, healthcare, citizenship, and movement.

Scholars link this dehumanization of black life to the enslavement of African, native, and black peoples in the Caribbean and in North-, South-, and Central America from 1619.

While this was not the first instance of creating an economic, political and legal system based on the enslavement of people, this system attempted to codify enslavement with skin color and phenotype. It impacted Africa, Europe, North-, South-, Central America, the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent and other areas of the world. Today, anti-blackness remains as a residual afterlife of this economic and political system.

Anti-Blackness & Migration.

As scholars have noted, many nations—including Canada, the U.S., and the U.K.—have policies which restrict the immigration of black people and block their access to citizenship. These policies are anti-black, and they are not new. In fact, the government’s policies and structures which restrict migration/citizenship are connected to the policies which restrict black life for people who are already citizens of the nation. Thus, we are called to think about “anti-blackness and migration” as a continuum of “anti-blackness in the nation.” We do not mean only one country when we say, “nation,” because scholars, activists, artists and many others have shown us and educated us about the existence of anti-blackness in many countries for more than 100 years.

The videos below allow us to hear from black people about their expierences of anti-blackness in different parts of the world.

There are many more available online!

Black Lives Matter co-founder, Alicia Garza explains the movement to end anti-blackness and states the objective of the movement.

A conversation about anti-blackness in the U.S.

This conversation provides insight into how Canada's anti-black racism effects public servants.

The presence of anti-black racism in Columbia is explored.

Black. Migration. Houston. considers anti-blackness through a broad feminist approach that is informed by critical race theory. As a group, our connection to migration comes from varied experiences, including the personal experience of migration, the experience of being raised by im/migrants, and research on migration within various academic disciplines. Our work is grounded in what we have learned from black, Latinx, and transnational feminists about intersectionality. Our learning topics will continue to expand to reflect our varied research as a working group and our different ways of studying migration and identity.

As our website develops, our discussion of anti-blackness will include:

  1. The response to anti-black policies by lawyers, community organizers/leaders, artists and members of the public.

  2. The current impact of policies which restrict citizenship from nations where the people are predominately of African descent.

  3. The current impact of policies which restrict the migration of Black LGBTQ+ migrants.

  4. Other organizations which serve Black LGBTQ+ migrants and serve as a resource to learn more about the migration of black peoples.

How We Tackle Anti-Blackness

Learn more about anti-blackness.

Check out these sources to for more information anti-blackness in different contexts: