Making Space, Black and Queer
Understanding my own gender and sexuality throughout the short 20 years I’ve spent on this Earth has been quite the journey. Growing up in a conservative, Christian, and Black household in the United States, I wasn’t given, nor did I grant myself, the space to consider that I could be anything other than a heterosexual, cisgender, woman. Like many others, much of my own self-discovery occurred while quarantined during the COVID-19 pandemic, which quite literally gave me plenty of time and space.
As a student at UNC Chapel Hill, I continued to take classes virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since UNC is a predominantly white space and university, part of my own self-care has been making it a point to enroll in courses taught by female professors of color, especially black, female professors. Reflecting on my first two semesters at UNC as a freshman, I noticed that I found solace while sharing space with these professors. I was able to exist separately from the white gaze that was present within classes taught by white professors and filled with white students, and was able to exist fully within my blackness.
During the fall of 2020, my first fully virtual semester, I enrolled in a super course about intersectionality. The class was taught by 3 professors, all female and persons of color, some of them also identifying as queer, and featured guest speakers who also identified as queer people of color.
As I began to see more people within academia who were simultaneously queer and not white, I began to shift the way that I saw myself existing in the world. I could see myself existing in the same spaces that my professors and their colleagues existed in. I began to question the reasons I’d made the decisions that I’d made up until that time. I began to shift away from the space that white supremacy left for me to exist in and gave myself room to exist as my full self. As a Black student attending UNC at the same time that Nikole Hannah-Jones is being denied tenure due to her own work that breaks away from white supremacy, my queer, black existence is, in itself, revolutionary.
Since enrolling in that course, I have begun to understand myself and the world, more fully. My experience while taking that course continues to serve as a reminder of how important it is for me, as a pansexual, non-binary Black woman, to center black queerness in the many layers of my daily life. By doing so, I am able to reaffirm my own identity while still giving myself space to grow even further. While I know this may not be feasible for all of my black queer folx out there, I encourage you to find and make space that will allow you to live in your blackness and queerness, unapologetically.
Are you an educator, parent/caregiver, or student interested in contributing to the blog? We are now accepting submissions for the spring and summer. Please email your interests or questions to sarajanee@weare-nc.org.