standingatthefence: September 25, 1952 - December 15th, 2021“In our small-town segregated worl
standingatthefence: September 25, 1952 - December 15th, 2021“In our small-town segregated world, we lived in communities of resistance, where even the small everyday gesture of porch sitting was linked to humanization. Racist white folks often felt extreme ire when observing a group of black folks gathered on a porch. They used derogatory phases like “porch monkey” both to express contempt and to once again conjure up racist iconography linking blackness to nature, to animals in the wild. As a revolutionary threshold between home and street, the porch as liminal space could also then be a place of antiracist resistance. While white folk could interpret at will the actions of a black person on the street, the black person or persons gathered on a porch defied such interpretation. The racist eye could only watch, yet never truly know, what was taking place on the porches among black folk.” Hooks, Bell. (2009). A Place Where the Soul Can Rest . Belonging: A culture of place (p.149). essay, Routledge. -- source link