Eat, Protest, Lift: Cultivating and Performing Positive Black Self-Imagery in Resistance to White Supremacy

Abstract

This dissertation and documentary maps my journey from being a disgruntled and disconnected social justice activist to a cultivator of decidedly Black active healing spaces for Black people in predominantly white communities. I argue that through social justice-minded organizing in the areas of food, physical fitness and social justice activism, positive and affirmed feelings of self and community can be forged through communal activity and fellowship. Using critical race theory, Black feminism and Black social work theories as theoretical frames, this dissertation asks: How do Black people create safe spaces that affirm their identities away from white ideologies of oppression that render Blackness negative? How do Black people learn to reframe negative narratives surrounding the projections of black racial stereotypes on their bodies through healthy eating, physical fitness and community activism to create positive social and cultural outcomes? How can social justice organizing with other Black people create more attuned physical and mental awareness about self and community care? Lastly, how can Black people perform self and community love in their everyday lives in the daily wake of anti-Blackness? Like so many realities of “living while Black,” results in feelings of disenfranchisement, depression and unreconciled grievances about how things “should be” or what “could have happened differently,” this dissertation seeks to map routes of agency that empower everyday Black people to create and build safe spaces within and around whiteness without making comparisons to how and why Black people and their experiences should be validated by people who are not of the global majority. I contend that by performing healthy self-perception and affirmation in public space, Black people can gain agency and confidence to safely self-present in predominantly white spaces without the need to affirm whiteness as a defining factor of becoming legible. Using a combination of documentary filmmaking, participant observation work as an active facilitator and curator of safe Black space, and biographical narratives as a methodological approach, I contrast with three site specific case studies: Black Brunch, a curated African diasporic brunch gathering that I began in 2016 in Lawrence, Kansas; a national cohort of competitive Black weight lifters: and the Lawrence, Kansas chapter of #Black Lives Matter, which I am a founder and principal organizer. I use these sites to map my work creating safe Black spaces in the food, fitness, and local social justice arenas of Lawrence, Kansas and the greater Turtle Island area. I include unedited biographical statement written by each person featured in the documentary in order to allow the subject to assert their agency in the process of making the film and the companion document. Together, both the film and written companion supplement explore how I cultivated and nurtured these Black spaces over three years using social media invites and face to face invitations to gain the trust of Black people in the local community to foster self-reflection and community affirmation. This investigation uses four sites of participant observation: my platform as one of the founders of Black Lives Matter-LFK (the Black Lives Matter chapter in Lawrence, Kansas), my organizing of a weekly Sunday event called "Black Brunch," my weekly workout regimen in competitive powerlifting, and my weekly community engagement in person and online towards intersectional Black liberation. This dissertation seeks to understand how cultivating a series of positive habits and rituals that are rooted in intersectionality and what Christina Sharpe calls "wake work" can redefine predominantly white and hostile space into safe spaces that encourage Black self and community affirmation. activism