We’re Not All In This Together: An Intro to Anti-Blackness in Queer Communities Workshop
This is a workshop for Black History Month, put on by the Carleton Gender and Sexuality Resource Centre in collaboration with the Institute of African Studies Student Association, the Race and Ethnicity Centre, and the Womyn's Centre. The event organizers state that the event is meant to be a healing space for Black LGBTQ+ people, and a learning space for others, to discuss anti-black racism in LGBTQ+ spaces.
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The bio provided for Martey describes her as such:
Naomi is a Black, queer, Ghanaian girl currently living and working on the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River (known as Toronto). For work, she acts as the Services Coordinator for the LGBT Youth Line where she gets to spend her days hanging out with awesome youth and swapping skills. In her organizing, she is occupied with issues of Black identity, femininity, diaspora, and the multifaceted ways we can build with the knowledge our experiences give us.
When she has a moment to herself, she’ll read some sci-fi, get killer nails, and nag her parents to eat better. -
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Martey has now directed everyone to go around the room to introduce themselves, state their preferred pronouns, what they want to get out of the workshop, and any issues/triggers they may have. Taylor-Meissner is also drafting a "Group Agreement" of rules for the workshop to follow, which includes respecting identities an triggers, not using slurs and keeping personal stories unidentifiable.
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The event is described as a "healing space for black folk", and a learning space for others. More about the event can be found on the Queering Black History Month Facebook event.
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Martey's presentation says black femmes (feminine-presenting individuals) created the vast majority of queer culture, but it is now predominantly associated with the white queer community. She says one example of this is queer terms that are deliberately removed from Black culture. Words like "shade", "voguing", etc.
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Martey says putting on black culture and removing it at will is an act of violence, because non-black folk can choose when to adopt mannerisms, when black people, specifically black femmes, need to present themselves in a certain way to be taken seriously, and cannot use their own mannerisms and language without being ridiculed and taken less seriously.
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Certainly from the standpoint of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the hope is that desires for the "primitive" or fantasies about the Other can be continually exploited, and that such exploitation will occur in a manner that reinscribes and maintains the status quo,"
- Hooks, "Eating the Other", quoted by Martey. She goes on to explain the quote, saying that non-black people often use elements of black culture, which they view as primitive, for their own gain, without attributing it to black people. She uses "twerking" and its appropriation by white communities as an example of this. -
Martey says that many white celebrities, including Justin Bieber, Adele, Sam Smith, Iggy Azalea, Macklemore appropriate black musical styles for their own profit. She says their art becomes the art of everyone as soon as it hits radio.
The type of music that they produce is directly built off of black art, black expression, that comes from the pain of blackness.
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Martey is giving a brief history of black dances that have cultural significance that have survived through slavery and transcontinental travel, and comments on their continued use by black sex workers as a means of survival, and how they were degraded, but that same dance is now stolen and commodified by non-black communities.
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Martey is starting to wrap up, and is cutting sections of her presentation due to time. She is currently speaking about erasure vs. hyper-visibility, and saying that white LGBTQ+ folks erase the presence of black LGBTQ+ folk, and that black people cannot express themselves as clearly as white people can.
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Martey says black communities are not more oppressive than other communities. People who say that deliberately ignore the fact that black people are the most hyper-visible and policed, and the consequences of straying from the norm are so much more severe for black people than for others, and they must adhere to the status quo to exist and survive.
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Participants are once again sharing their responses. Some responses include not commenting on body types, prioritizing black accessibility, not appropriating black culture or using black experiences to explain other experiences, and not touching people without permission.
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