What kind of racial reckoning is this? Black LGBTQ Practices of Care amid Spatial Marginalization

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and magnified the deep social inequalities, health disparities, and spatial marginalization that disproportionately impact Black queer communities. For example, Black LGBTQ people disproportionately experience homelessness and housing instability due to convergent anti-black racism and homophobia and transphobia.

This presentation examines the ways that Black queer communities create spaces and situations of affirmation, care, pleasure, and sex to withstand the anti-black queerness that they experience in spatial terms. Drawing from the growing scholarship on Black queer geographies, I argue that Black LGBTQ communities employ queer practices of care and pleasure to transform anti-black queer spatial conditions that undermine their overall health and wellbeing.

This talk is brought to you by the Departments of African & African American Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.