Key words: Creolisation | Marginalised | Transracial | Toleration | Echochambers | Minoritised | Monohumanism | Eurocentric | Ungendering
If you’re unsure of definitions, please search any of the keywords online for further clarification
Notes:
- The wording and context of “our” eg “our community” or “our experiences” refers to myself, the author's experience as a mixed-Black 'woman' (she/they) within “our” community - meaning the community of friends around me, made up of a number of intersecting identities. I do not wish to speak for people with identities outside of my own experience, but do wish to speak on shared experiences we have gone through.
- I sometimes use quotation marks “like this” over words or phrases that I seek to challenge or investigate further, such as “sex worker” - which has a reference link to an article about the terms of “sex worker” versus “prostituted women”.
- This article is a hybrid piece of writing, it is, a mixture of :
A research paper, a journal entry, an opinion piece, a historical essay and a poem.
It is messy and imperfect but everything has been researched, thought about intentionally, fact-checked and linked to an extensive source list.
- This piece of writing is part of my research as the 2023 Stuart Hall Fellow at Sussex University and contributes to my work around ‘creative, decolonial and nontraditional research methods’.
Trans/Racial Possibilities, Histories and Futures
AN INTRODUCTION
Brighton has a label of diversity and inclusion. It is supposedly the gay capital of the UK*1 or arguably Europe, and with this label comes assumptions that can be wholly summed up as having good intentions with bad outcomes. The blanket term of diversity given to Brighton, in my mind, refers to diversity catered by and for the white and cis community. The hypocrisy of the label of diversity associated to Brighton is that it's exclusionary to a number of marginalised and minoritised communities, particularly for people of colour, trans people and people with disabilities.
With a population of 1.5% Black people*2 (compared to the 3.5% national average) and 3.8% mixed-race people, Brighton is suffocatingly white. And despite the fact that Brighton is very queer in its culture, its spaces and its peoples, there are often blind spots in its lack of trans-inclusion. With this in mind, I have noticed amongst my own communities and those close to me, a cultural creolisation of a small population of both the Black and trans communities of Brighton, (of course with many people fitting into both of these ‘categories’). While our experiences vary widely, with no one monolithic truth, I have witnessed a merging of communities perhaps born out of the overwhelming need for kinship, understanding amongst hyper-perceived peoples in Brighton, and the ability to de-mask, creating this new third space (a sort of counter-culture / community to the dynamics of power and dominant cultures/classes within Brighton). This line of thought is influenced by Bhabha, H.K’s theory of The Third Space*3 and how the merging of two cultures and/or communities offers a sort of hybridity and third space in which something new can emerge.
“The process of cultural hybridity gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognisable, a new area of negotiation and meaning and representation.”
So is there something to be said in the recognition between minoritised peoples in heavily-populated-dominant-class areas? And what can be said about this so-called negotiation? Isn’t what we’re actively trying to deconstruct indeed this sense of negotiation, that to me, really just means compromise?
Perhaps what we're trying to create in this meeting and intersection of dominated peoples coming together is a space free of ‘negotiation’, or ‘toleration’; Toleration: (Noun) The power or capacity of an organism to tolerate unfavorable environmental conditions.*4 So if we take ourselves to be the unfavourable environmental conditions personified, isn’t there something radically powerful in creating our own self-sustaining eco-systems and echo-chambers? In direct contrast to the misplaced positivity of the word ‘toleration’, I see a similarly misplaced negativity in the word ‘echo-chambers’; an environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered.*5. With this statement its important to say I am of course not contesting the dangers of echo-chambers, particularly in relation to the extremist views found in spaces such as far-right communities and cultures, but perhaps there's something to be said about the reclamation of echo-chambers by Black and/or trans people and other minoritised communities in search of truly safe spaces.
NOT ALL MARGINALISED KNOW ALL MARGINALISATION
It’s important to note that a shared experience of general ‘marginalisation’ is not necessarily enough to constitute deep and meaningful bonding, or a ‘succesful’ creolisation of communities. We can clearly see this through a history of misogyny, transmisogyny and misogynoir within the Black community, or on the other hand, with relation to gender, in the tone-deafness of white-trans-led spaces leading to the (deliberate) exclusion of trans people of colour from these ‘safe spaces’. There is a danger in replicating the false label of Brighton’s diversity within our own micro-communities by assuming our (some) shared experiences can equate to truly safe spaces and full understanding of each other's identities. What is perhaps safer to assume is that creating self-sustaining pockets of community that seek to eventually function outside of the macro-community of Brighton (- perhaps a synonym for Capatilism, the Patriarchy, the Eurocentric…) led by marginalised folks will always have a better chance of thriving and providing adequate emotional shelter than the larger environments that promise much and deliver little. And while there’s no denying that Black and trans folks are beautiful, extraordinary beings, there’s something equally beautiful in this idea of the radical normality in just existing and being our own authentic selves. As Paul Gilroy calls it, “the vibrant, ordinary multiculture”*6. On a micro-level relative to Brighton, this Black and trans existance can arguably be related to the concept of ‘counterhumanism’*7 by Katherine McKittrick and “putting forward an alternative, yet no less secular, version of humanness imagined outside liberal monohumanism”.
A concept that comes to mind when thinking about the potential dangers of assuming ‘all marginalised folks know all marginalisation’ (my alternative to the saying ‘not all skinfolk are kinfolk, perhaps more intersectionally appropriate to this subject) is ‘being thankful for crumbs’. From what I gather, this saying has ties to Christianity and religion; “Thank God for CRUMBS! It is our FAITH in but the smallest touch of the master's hand, that changes whole nations!”*8 . And while the idea of endless optimism and gratitude sounds lovely, this concept presents itself more to me as a reflection of myself and my communities own tendency to be thankful for the smallest opportunities, the slightest tolerations and the tiniest breaths of acceptance, particularly within Brighton. So by creating these self-sustaining environments, when done right, I find we in turn help to raise each other's standards; showing, for the first time for some of us, the feeling of, if not whole, most definitely true, acceptance, and an opportunity to spend time existing outside of your relation to being perceived by the dominant cultures and classes.
A TRANSRACIAL HISTORY, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
It feels lazy to start and end the connections of Blackness and transness or genderfluidity on shared themes of prejudice, perception and marginalisation. When we dig just a little deeper, we can find a wealth of information and insights on the connection between these two identities historically and outside of colonial narratives.
But within the first waves of colonisation and the West’s obsession of distinction, control and containment of savage peoples and countries, most of us may have been taught of the concept of scientific racism, which “shockingly”, had no scientific basis at all. Methods such as measuring skulls to prove white superiority via brain density can be linked to similar methods used to suggest Black and brown ‘savages’ were more animal than human, and therefore not deserving of fitting into eurocentric binaries regarding genders. This connection between race and gender was one of the pillars of the justification of colonisation, showcasing the dominant classes concept of inferiority within its relation to these binaries. This and other topics of gender fluidity in regards to white supremacy can be explored further in my research Poem ‘The Gender Binary is a Tool of White Supremacy’*9
Beyond this, the links between Blackness and gender fluidity go back to ideas around “the fugitive slave” and the process of slaves “ungendering” and “passing” in order to escape captivity and their lives as chattel slaves. Take Mary Jones (“The Man Monster”) an American transgender “sex worker”*10 who stole men's money after they had “solicited sex”, dressing and coding herself in “masculine-presenting” attire in the day and “feminine-presenting” attire in the evening*11. In his book, The Amalgamation Waltz, Tavia Nyong'o stated that Jones "[transformed] shame and stigma not by transcending them or repressing them but by employing them as resources in the production of new modes of meaning and being"*12 The few archived photos of genderfluid Black fugitive slaves provides glimpses into imagined lives outside of captivity, and the ungendered possibilities of a “free” life.
I’d also be remiss to discuss a transracial history without paying tribute to the founders of so many political movements, collectives and protests. In this section of the article I will dedicate a few poetic lines to some of the amazing Black trans women, femmes and non-binary leaders, activists and icons. Despite being some of the most visible and vulnerable to public and private hatred, police brutality, and laws and bills that attack their very existence, these Black trans activists have, throughout history and today, fully embodied the concept of “if there’s no space for us, we will create it”.
This is for Marsha P Johnson, not the first or the last,*13
Leading Stonewall riots and changing present and past
She co-f(o)unded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) to
create a new start
The first LGBTQ+ youth shelter in North America was part of her path
This is for Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and all that she did*13
Another Stonewall activist who was abused, incarcerated and hid
She pushed for prison abolition and later put House of GG on the grid
A healing retreat for the trans community providing spirits lift-ed
This is for Travis Alabanza, A Black British poet and creator*14
Through rhymes, theatre and comedy they are a radical educator
Providing space for healing and acceptance - a community caretaker
Of Black and trans history they are a key narrator
This is for Andrea Jenkins, the first Black trans woman elected to lead a city council
in the United States*15
Also a published poet and oral historian - her words use joy to tackle hate
An advocate against police brutality because she knows what is at stake
Providing community representation in politics and helping new futures take place
REFLECTIONS
It feels like I could continue writing infinitely, because a transracial history, a transracial present and a transracial future is infinite. Black trans people always have and always will exist, and the sometimes separate communities of ‘Black’ and ‘Trans’ continue to merge around me, and I continue to see new ways that allyship presents itself. I hope with this article, I have been able to provide a small glimpse into the privilege I have of being part of a community, a group of friends, chosen family and allies, and how good it feels when we show up for each other. I hope I have been able to both use this article as a vessel for my own celebrations and reflections on my own community experiences, as well as providing a wider context and history of the legacy of blackness and gender. In between starting and finishing this article, due to a number of realisations and meditations, my pronouns changed to She/They after an ancestral connection and experience I had, and I too realised that, of the beautiful genderfluid Black people, spirits and experiences I speak of, I am, in some small way, now and always, a part of that.
References and Notes
BLACK ON BOTH SIDES - *11
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