In America, Freedom is a Tenuous Thing

For years, my friends and I have talked about starting a commune. 

We didn’t call it that, of course. We used words like “pocket neighborhood” or “co-housing community.” Don’t get my wrong: it wasn’t that we wanted a cult or anything like that. And, unlike what one of my students suggested just yesterday, this impulse is not guided by a desire to re-segregate. No, the allure of these insulated spaces is that we get to imagine a place that would allow us to be neighbors with the people we love the most. And, it would allow us the opportunity to build solidarity and safety in times that feel very dangerous, especially for those of us who are not white.

As HBCU graduates, many of my friends (and also my partner, my parent, my grandparents, my aunt, my cousins, my child) and I all have had an experience in one of these safe spaces. On these black college campuses, a person’s blackness is not the singular marker of their identity nor is it treated as disadvantage or character flaw. My black college experience showed me how a future philosopher, scientist, musician, architect, teacher, or any other career professional could live to their fullest potential without the racial asterisk that is often assigned in many integrated spaces. To be black in an majority black space is to avoid having one's racial identity treated as some sort of deficiency or pre-existing condition.

So, imagine bringing that degree of comfort and freedom into your living community. Imagine the relief inherent in that proposition. There would not be a concern about neighbors calling the police as our kids put up lemonade or water stands, or as we barbecued outdoors; we wouldn’t worry that a #blacklivesmatter yard sign would elicit backlash or that the person living next door would declare that we didn’t belong there. At its core, the idea of living in a black space is directly connected to freedom, safety, and belonging. And, isn’t that the core tenet to being an American? The right to life, the right to liberty, the right to pursue one’s own happiness?

My guess is that this is exactly what 19 black Georgian families had in mind when they chipped in to purchase 97 acres of land near Toomsboro, GA, creating a new town they would rename Freedom.

I saw this story a few months ago when the property first was advertised for sale ;  my friends and I talked then about how cool it would be to buy it and fix it up. A domestic Wakanda!, one said. After the Freedom, GA story broke last weekend, we even started looking again at similar parcels of land we could use to begin our own permanent social bubble. A few contenders emerged: 335 acres of land in Summersville, MO for $995,000; 205 acres of land in Nahunta, GA for $250,000. Why so cheap? Why doesn’t everyone just buy up huge chunks of land like this. Crazy. 

It was so crazy I lost myself for a minute, swept up in the excitement of being only 45 minutes from the beach and only 90 minutes from Jacksonville — a large city with large city amenities and an international airport. I started calling my sister and mom to find my early adopters in our own freedom space. I started calculating mortgages and uses of the land. 20 housing lots, a dog park, an art studio, a library. In my giddy delusions, I forgot to check for the things that we as a community of black families in America have to make a consideration with any move we make. Let's call it the 'Greenwood Meditation'.

Greenwood is a district of Tulsa, Oklahoma that, in the early 20th century, was home to a thriving community of African Americans. Walter White, the then national secretary of the NAACP, reported that "Tulsa [was] a thriving, bustling, enormously wealthy town of between 90,000 and 100,000. In 1910 it was the home of 18,182 souls...[who] had bank deposits totaling $65,449,985.90; almost $1,000 per capita when compared with the Federal Census figures of 1920." But, because of resentment against the town's prosperity, including several black millionaires, and because of unchecked racial terrorism and white vigilantes, between the evening of May 31 and the morning of June 1, 1921, between 150 and 200 black residents were massacred and over 1.5 million dollars in property was destroyed. The community was all but lost.

(Season 1, Episode 1 of HBO's Watchmen offers a cinematic re-telling of this event. It is chilling.)

Thriving black families and communities have been and still are targets for rage from those who see black independence and excellence as a threat. And, because of this, black people cannot simply make these kinds of moves without making provisions for their safety and well being. Some folx get to make their residential choices based on the proximity to the beach, based on the performance of the local schools, based on the walkability score of the area. And some of us have to make our first priority the fact that we won’t get harassed, shot at, kidnapped, killed or have our houses burned to the ground. Yes — even in 2020. Location matters.

One quick Google search of “Nahunta, GA and KKK,” and I was reminded why more people don’t make these moves. These kinds of moves are not for everyone. These are moves for white (and white passing) folx who are mildly annoyed by racism but who are willing to stomach it to live out their American dream.

This Nahunta revelation really has me thinking about some of what I am hearing related to the upcoming 2020 presidential election. Many--too many--of my fellow white-identifying (and, sadly, some of my middle class black and brown neighbors) have come to see their privileges as truths across all people. And, that is a mistake. Every day, I watch as more and more people have their personal liberties stripped away. Things we know to be rights for all American are perched on a slippery precipice because the of inability to see the differences in our experiences.

Let me tell you, friends. Your freedom ain't like mine. My freedom and that of many people who look like me comes with a caveat.

My freedom requires people who do not look like me to want a future that is drastically different from our past. This capacity to embrace change for the collective good is what is central to this election. Change is messy and sometimes uncomfortable. And, what we are being asked is to give up a little bit of our comfort to make space for new voices and new opportunities. We are being asked to sacrifice a bit of our privilege to do what is right and protect our neighbors from what is wrong.

Too many people argue that, while they do not like the stories coming out of our nationwide concentration camps--those about migrant women who are being forcibly sterilized and about migrant children who are ripped from their parents and never returned--they are willing to overlook it because of personal concerns around unemployment and changing neighborhood and national demographics, and, as a result, they can justify arguments that strip away the basic human rights of human beings. Many have expressed sadness over the shootings of unarmed men and women, who are by no mistake overwhelmingly black and die at the hands of police and racist vigilantes, but these same saddened people are hesitant to call for change because protesters have been loud and messy and made it uncomfortable to dine outside the way they used to be able to do. Maybe we should just leave things as they were, they say. There are lots of these negotiations — negotiations between one’s sense of right vs. one’s personal sense of comfort. And, at the core of that negotiation is white privilege.

What is the limit? How much bigotry and hatred can we overlook? How many violations of human rights can we forgive if we get to be as comfortable as possible?

As I sit here in the wake of the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, what I feel overwhelmingly is that people are afraid. I am afraid. We are all afraid of change in some way--afraid that things will change too much or that things won't change enough. And, that fear is what keeps me from being able to be fully free in this nation that touts freedom as its core guiding principle.

So, as I close all of these real estate tabs on my phone and press pause again on the idea of forming my personal utopian village, my commune, I want to share one thing. As much as I like to imagine a dream of a private community of my closest friends, I will settle for one that simple solidifies my rights as central and primary to my existence. I’d give up the beach, the city, and even the airport, just to know my children and niblings could grow up in a community where their right to life was non-negotiable.