Queerness & Black Identity Politics
An overview of my scholarship and theoretical approach to my work.
Integrative Studies| School of Humanities and Sciences| Ithaca College, Class of ‘22
If I was going to survive, I had to enroll my ancestors in class with me…
Queerness & Black Identity Politics is the title of my self-designed Bachelor of Arts. My program of study integrated Sociology; Politics; Culture, Race, and Ethnicity Studies, and Education courses to provide me with an interdisciplinary perspective on identity-making and relating. My research traces the history of how the black/white racial binary and the man/woman gender binary were socially constructed and politically cemented in relation to each other as both representations and facilitators of a larger logos of domination and isolation. I explore how these systems revolve around colonizing ideas of deviance that then get conscripted into popular cultural perspectives of/responses to criminality and pathology. Through a theological lens, I examine the historical “justifications” of patriarchy, white supremacism, and colonization that determine what/who is named as “criminal” and “crazy”. Queerness & Black Identity Politics contextualizes patriarchy, heteronormativity, and racism as a trifecta of anti-collectivist, anti-spiritual, and anti-indigenous beliefs that begets carceral culture. I am dedicated to never ending the narrative in the oppressor’s imagination. My research always seeks solace under the umbrella of indigenous spirituality, my specific focus being on the Yorùbá tradition of Ifá Ìṣẹ̀ṣe L’àgbà. Queerness & Black Identity Politics is also about uplifting the wisdom of Ìṣẹ̀ṣe L’àgbà, the dynamic existence of the Òrìṣà, and the ancestral tools that have been and will continue to help us be free.
I exalt Black Queer people not only as memorykeepers of indigenous ways but as memoryweavers:
those who stitch the past and the future in overlap-- threading possibility both ways so the cross(roads) remains just as much a portal of life as of death,
those who remember discordantly to get closer to the truth.
“But memory, like the mind, has the capacity to dream...”
THEN & THERE HERE
I see queerness and blackness as placeholders for the creative force of indigeneity as it travels across time and space.
Trainings/Certifications:
JEMs Literacy Training Program (2024)
Peoples Medicine School for Community Herbalism (2020)
NASPA Peer Educator Certificate Program (2018)
My research highlights the liberatory role of Black Queer people as portal doulas. In a culture that prioritizes surveillance to upkeep the appearance of confining concepts of “reality”, Black Queer people’s engagement with the unseen is pathologized and/or criminalized because it poses a foundational threat to the maintenance of white supremacist patriarchal capitalism. Our engagement with the unseen ranges from traditionally holding special roles in rituals as the mouth of Spirits, to dressing a certain way because it feels in alignment despite the seen-ness of what biological essentialism deems is appropriate for a certain body, to organizing towards a world without police. And it is all sacred. Through popular education, self-retrieval, and ceremonial holding, I seek to change the cultural gaze towards Black Queer people and traditional African spirituality from a lens of deficiency, and to exalt the ancestral world sense and methodologies of Black Queer culture as a framework for freeing ourselves and each other and living in generative relationship with the land and spirit.
Courses Highlight:
Race & Religion
Exploring Black Sexualities
Social & Cultural Foundations of Education
Inquiry, Research, and Writing Across Curriculum
Discipline & Punishment in Public Schools
Working Across Borders: Identity, Ethics, & Justice
Educational Psychology
HOW DO WE HEAL?
✱
HOW DO WE HEAL? ✱
The thematic underpinnings of my research are my curiosities around:
“How?” not in doubt of the possibility and present reality of the matter, “How?” as in “what are the mechanics of the matter?”
What is original deviance (some may insert ‘sin’)? What psychological, social, spiritual, cosmological influences created the container in which difference failed to exist in neutral equilibrium and became hegemonized? How do we heal? How has the metric for calculating one’s distance from/proximity to ‘being valuable’ changed over time? How does life exist in exile? How do the ideological underpinnings of what makes a ‘human’ resemble and vary across cultures throughout time? What is time? How does blackness and queerness bend time? How does blackness and queerness lay the foundation of, interrupt, go beyond, and create possibilities for the ma(r)ker of ‘human’? How do we heal?
MY MODALITIES
Popular Education
☾
Self-Retrieval
☽
Ceremonial Holding
☾
Popular Education ☾ Self-Retrieval ☽ Ceremonial Holding ☾
-
I am passionate about reimagining education to be affirming to one's purpose and pleasure. I am dedicated to learning, with others, about ways to make revolutionary knowledge and the wisdom of the land accessible to the public.
-
I believe shadow work, the psycho-spiritual process of integrating fragmented and abandoned selves, is necessary to creating cultural shifts. I believe in tending to our inner child to connect with our purpose and reclaim our inner voice to be one of possibility, fluidity, and compassion.
-
There is no revolution without our spirits. Period. It is vital to strategize with our rebellious ancestors and indigenous deities. May we learn to hold our hearts, laden with a longing-- both linked to grief and desire--with sanctity.
Workshop Facilitation
Workshops are intimate settings for us to engage the self within the collective. My workshop offerings span focal points including writing, herbalism, movement, and visual arts. We always start with centering in our bodies and breath and bid farewell with group reflection and transition steps.
Previous Workshops:
→ ANEW: On Love, Longing, & Sustainable Sweetness, a collective self-study inspired by selected works from Audre Lorde and Toni Morrison
→ Sacral Revival Dance Session with the Doula Access Initiative
→ Hearts Made of Violet: Solstice Ceremony with the Jane Minor BIPOC Community Medicine Garden
→ An Intergenerational Paint & Tea with the Bay Shore High School
Speaking Engagements
Larger scale keynotes and teach-ins enable us to delve into my research as it relates to what the collective is needing in a particular time and context. I keep a people and spirit-centered approach, embedding moments of call-and-response and meditation to support the poem that masquerades as a presentation.
Previous Engagements:
→ Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos + Community | Keynote for MLK Week at Ithaca College
→ Past Our House: Reclaiming the Role of Vodun in Black Liberation | Presenter at Whalen Academic Symposium
→ Let the Overflow Be Enuf with Juju Bae | Moderator for BOLD Women’s Leadership Network
Curriculum Development
Developing curriculum is such a rich and enlivening process! This format enables information to iterate across time and space in an expansive way and it welcomes return, allowing for breadth and depth.
Previous Curriculum:
→ The Black Consciousness Curriculum Journal with the Community Unity Music Education Program
→ Freed & Fetishized with the School of Humanities and Sciences Summer Scholar Program at Ithaca College
→ Youth Visual Arts Programming on self-determination, land stewardship, and collective responsibility with the Ithaca Southside Community Center’s After School Program