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B A PARKER, HOST:
Before we get into the episode, I wanted to take a minute to ask for your help. We want to hear from our listeners about what you like about CODE SWITCH and how we could do better. You can tell us what you think by taking our survey at npr.org/codeswitchsurvey. Thank you.
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PARKER: Hey, everyone. You're listening to CODE SWITCH, the show about race and identity from NPR. I'm B.A. Parker.
GENE DEMBY, HOST:
And I'm Gene Demby.
PARKER: Gene, do you think it's possible for us to ever live in a utopia?
DEMBY: You mean like some place where people skipping around with tie-dye on - you know what I mean? - making, I don't know, various nut milks (laughter) with like-minded people? In this current climate? No, absolutely not.
PARKER: I mean, all you need is a blender and some time. But when you put it like that, it sounds silly.
DEMBY: Why? Are you trying to live in a utopia or something?
PARKER: I don't know. I think I just need the possibility of a place where I feel safe or I guess, rather where Black people feel safe.
DEMBY: Have you ever had that before?
PARKER: Well, I'm from Baltimore, which already feels like a Black utopia.
DEMBY: Wait. What? Really?
PARKER: I mean, it's a predominantly Black city. And it was a space where growing up, I was surrounded by Black people who felt proud and were allowed to be who they were unencumbered. And honestly, it wasn't until I was surrounded by white people in middle school that I started, I don't know, like, feeling bad about myself. And then I went to, like, a Black high school, I went to an HBCU for college, and then, like, I felt great again. I felt good again.
DEMBY: OK. Yeah. OK. But I'm wondering if there's a difference between a space that felt safe for you and, like, a utopia. You wouldn't say your HPCU was a utopia, would you? And also, like, Black folks are not going to agree on what safety even looks like, you know what I mean?
PARKER: Yeah. I mean, not to say that Black folk don't have our own problems, but I am a Black woman in the world today, and especially in this political time, hostility towards people like me becomes more brazen when people in power seem cool with it. And I think about safety and security. And I find myself yearning again for a space where I feel safe and free. And it has me wondering, does that have to be a Black space?
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DEMBY: Right, 'cause if you're trying to make an intentional utopian community somewhere, doesn't some shared ethos - you know what I mean? - some common cause matter more than a common identity?
PARKER: These are all questions that Aaron Robertson was puzzling through in his new book, "The Black Utopians." In it, Aaron explores the Black enclaves that came about post reconstruction all the way up to today. And he asks this big question - what does a Black utopia look like? It can be a lot of different things. And one of the places that fits the bill for Aaron might surprise you.
AARON ROBERTSON: Detroit, the city that tends to be thought of, I think, as a kind of American dystopia.
DEMBY: All right, Parker. Let's hear it.
PARKER: I started out talking with Aaron Robertson about what makes a Black utopia. And he told me that some of the places he thinks of as utopias are pretty surprising to the people who haven't experienced them firsthand.
ROBERTSON: As soon as you leave Detroit and tell people where you're from, people will ask, so what's it like being there? And I think when I was a kid, I would internalize a lot of that. And...
PARKER: Oh, yeah.
ROBERTSON: ...I would be so focused on images of dilapidated homes and abandoned factories and less concentrated on the stories of the people who were there, who were always making their home into a much better place. So I was curious about what it would be like to tell a story about Detroit and about other places where Black people have thrived. That was a counter narrative of sorts, you know.
And also, I grew up going to this small town in Tennessee west of Nashville called Promised Land, where my dad's dad was born. We would go down there every summer for family reunions and gatherings. And when I was a kid, I didn't have a great appreciation, I think, for the historic weight of a place like this. But as I got older, I realized that, OK, not all Black people come from towns like this, which is a very simple thing, but there were so many other stories of Black towns throughout the country, like, in the South, in the West, and I wanted to write about these spaces that Black people have created throughout time, these safe havens that, in some ways, were outside of mainstream narratives. And I wanted to trace a broad history of these Black utopian spaces and ways of thinking about these spaces, too.
PARKER: OK. So in your mind, what is considered a Black utopia? Like, is it just simply a safe space or a safe haven for the Black collective?
ROBERTSON: I think Black utopia can have so many meanings, like, which is the great and frustrating thing about it, right? I think there are these real physical spaces that African Americans have carved out in order to experience a sense of community, sure, but also, these are spaces where Black people have been able to imagine alternatives to the social, economic and political restrictions that historically have been imposed on Black people.
So, you know, utopia is a way of relating to other people. It is ways of reinforcing the dignity of yourself and of your neighbor. And I think when you live in a world that has been trying to tell you, as a Black person, that maybe you aren't worth much, finding spaces where you can push back against that, I think, is fundamental.
PARKER: All right. I'm going to do something terrible. I'm going to read you to you.
ROBERTSON: Oh, my gosh.
PARKER: And I just - I want to apologize immediately. You asked this question earlier on in the book. It says - you say, quote, "how have Black people together and alone created good places from the various nowheres to which they have been consigned for centuries, the dark town, the ghetto, the reform school, the internment camps, the segregated church, the former plantation site, the riot-scarred street and, as in my father's case, the prison?" Did you answer that question for yourself?
ROBERTSON: (Laughter) In part. Yeah. So a part of the book is about my own relationship with my father, for example. From the time I was 8 until I was 18, we were separated because he was incarcerated. And we exchanged letters during that time and I would sometimes, you know, like, visit him as a child. But there was always some kind of distance between us. And I know that he was grappling with his life in prison.
He was grappling with the life that he had, but also the lives that he had envisioned for himself, but life was not going to play out exactly how he had envisioned it. And to be fair, for my father and for other people in the book who I'm writing about who experienced life in prison, it was a place of repression and suffering and often abuse at the hands of prison guards.
And yet, for some people, it became a site of resistance, too. So one of the people I write about is this Black nationalist artist named Glanton Dowdell. He was born in Detroit, like, right before the Great Depression started. And when he was a young man, he went to prison on a murder charge and he was there for about 10 years. And he was also a brilliant visual artist, and it was during his time in prison where he began to really refine his skills as an artist.
He also led movements among the prisoners to resist abuse by the guards. But one of Glanton's jobs in prison was to teach other inmates how to paint, how to create art. And one of the lessons that he taught the people he was around, they would be outside walking the yard and Glanton once picked up a stone and said to some of the inmates, you don't need a canvas, really, to create a work of art. You can paint something on the stone that's right in front of you.
And that, I think, is, kind of, a lesson that is so representative of what it means to take this space of duress and find some small way to make it more livable, but also to find ways to make your life better, imagine what life could be otherwise.
PARKER: What distinguishes a Black utopia from a general utopia, in your mind?
ROBERTSON: When you think within the context of American history, so many of the white utopian narratives that we grew up with are about westward expansion and the development of the frontier. These visions are so often predicated on the dispossession of Indigenous Americans and also the disenfranchisement of Black people within the U.S. And so I wanted to draw attention to the ways that Black Americans, in particular, despite these kind of historical realities, have attempted to create a better life.
And so really, like, what it often comes down to is what are the counter structures and counter institutions that Black people have created throughout time, whether it's political parties or creating credit unions and mutual aid societies, whether it's imagining, in some cases, the creation, like, of an all-Black state.
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: As in the case of, you know, a group like the Republic of New Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, this organization that was such a part of the counter culture of that time, and they had envisioned taking five contiguous states in the U.S. South and essentially creating an independent country within the borders of the United States. And it was meant to be a refuge from the punishing American legal apparatus that had been so awful for so many Black Americans. It was also meant to be a space where Black people who were against the Vietnam War could go for refuge. So there are creative ways to attempt to escape oppressive structures.
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: And that's - that, I think, is the thing that really sets Black utopianism apart.
PARKER: Yeah. You mentioned already your family's homestead of Promised Land. But what was the historical context behind the place?
ROBERTSON: Yeah. So Promised Land was this town that was established in the years after the Civil War. You know, Black families largely started to move there beginning in the 1870s. A lot of the, you know, founding families of Promised Land had worked on one of the iron plantations that were in Dixon County, Tennessee, where Promised Land is located, about an hour west of Nashville.
And when the Civil War happened, so many of the kind of factories in the region had been destroyed as a result of the war. And so you had a set of families in the region who still needed a home. And so Black families started to come together to pool their resources to then buy land that eventually became Promised Land. And Promised Land, as a town, really existed for about 100 years or so.
I mean, you know, its height, in terms of population, was probably in the 1910s and '20s. And over the course of the 20th century, you know, Black families there started to move away. Many moved north for better, like, job opportunities or because they had relatives there. And in the 1970s, like, there were still some families there. But it really was kind of becoming a ghost town of the sorts.
But even then, like, even when people moved away from this town, it was still the site of family gatherings. Like, it was still the site of, you know, these annual festivals that were meant to appreciate what a town like this meant for so many Black people. It was a refuge from white terrorist violence during the era of Jim Crow. And unlike so many other spaces like this, Promised Land was largely untouched by racial violence. It kind of was one of those lucky spaces that (laugher)...
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: ...Seemed to have been passed over, in a sense. And it was also the place where many African Americans owned their own land. They built homes and shops and churches and a one-room schoolhouse. And even now, the only buildings that remain are the one-room schoolhouse and a Methodist church. But now, you know, these are used as community centers and spaces to bring people together in a very new way.
And I think even the reuse of these spaces is kind of a sign of the ways that these spaces can persist, like, even if the historical conditions that birthed them have completely changed, you know?
PARKER: There is a moment in the book - in that town, there's a talk, like, this is like this utopia, like, the violence was passed over. But was it more so, like, our grandparents, great-grandparents, just, like, just glossed over it?
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
PARKER: All right.
ROBERTSON: I mean it's a bit of both of that, I think, right? Like, I think a lot of the people who grew up in Promised Land, so I'm thinking people of my grandfather's generation, many of them did not witness the kind of racial violence that so many other Black families at that time were experiencing. But also, I do think that even, like, their parents were very intentional about kind of concealing (laughter) or trying to protect their children from some of the worst, like, that was out there.
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: So for example, my grandfather's cousin, a woman named Kay (ph). She is in her late 70s now, and she is sort of the great historian of this town...
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: ...Has been a real big advocate for Promised Land. And she told me the story about her dad. When she and her siblings were growing up, her dad would not allow them for a time to walk into the nearby town of Charlotte to get what they needed, so you know, groceries and clothes, et cetera. That was his job. He would take their feet and place them on pieces of cardboard and he would trace the outlines of their feet.
And then he would take that piece of cardboard and go into town, go into the stores and bring them back their shoes. And sometimes Kay would ask her dad, like, what was it like? Like, what did you experience on the way there and on the way back? And Kay's dad essentially told them, like, don't worry about it. Like, mind your business, right?
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: And the idea was that he very well may have experienced some kind of racist aggression there, but he wanted his kids to feel safe. So it's a little bit of, you know, storytelling...
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: ...In order to make your life more bearable. You always sense that on the edge of Promised Land, were these more kind of nuanced and complicated stories about what life actually was. But I think it was important, at least for, you know, my - for my grandfather and for his siblings and other relatives to feel even if life was not going to be a paradise for them that they had these moments in their life where they didn't have to worry about what was going to come down the line.
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PARKER: Coming up, we're talking more about the pursuit of a Black utopia. Stay with us.
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PARKER: Parker, just Parker. CODE SWITCH. Back with Aaron Robertson talking about what makes a Black utopia. One of the examples that stood out most to me in his book was a church called the Shrine of the Black Madonna, which was created by a man named Albert Cleage Jr. So I asked Aaron what made this church so special, so uniquely utopian.
ROBERTSON: The Shrine of the Black Madonna was best known in the late 1960s and early '70s for being a Black nationalist church that was also at the forefront of what is sometimes called Black liberation theology. And this is the idea that - essentially that Christ is a Christ of the oppressed and that Christianity is really a narrative about protecting those who have been disinherited and dispossessed.
Cleage was known as sort of the great practitioner of Black theology. That was the mantra of his church and of the movement that he started there, which he called Black Christian Nationalism, was that nothing is more sacred than the liberation of Black people. And that phrase shaped not only Cleage's theology, his religious beliefs, but also his belief in the importance of political involvement, of economic self-determination and of spiritual change.
PARKER: You said, in describing his belief, that, like, African communalism was an appropriate response to white egocentrism?
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
PARKER: And I think I started to, like, that felt very apropos, even in maybe 2024.
ROBERTSON: Yeah. It's right. I mean, Albert Cleage called himself either a Black realist or a pragmatic realist. And one of the things that he stood against was this sense of kind of selfish individualism. He grew up in this kind of affluent Black family in Detroit, was the first Black doctor to be hired by the city of Detroit. And so really, the Cleages were known as socialites. They were covered widely in the Black press and so Cleage had a privileged upbringing.
And he was also at one point, as a young man, he worked as a social worker on the east side of Detroit, where a lot of poor Black people and immigrants from different parts of Europe were often crowded and in really horrible living conditions. He saw that and he saw the - kind of the circumstances of his own life and was really kind of appalled by those contradictions and opposition to greed and accumulation, like, for its own sake, became an important part of his work.
Instead of focusing on the fate of individual people and acquiring for your own sake, he was interested in, OK, how can we actually create communities? How can we bring people together to focus on communalism, as opposed to, you know, individualism?
PARKER: I - OK. A question that I kept asking myself while reading the book - and it felt dangerous to think because it's such a slippery slope question...
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
PARKER: ...Is segregation necessary to create a utopia?
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ROBERTSON: That's a great question.
PARKER: Is it?
ROBERTSON: It is. And it...
PARKER: 'Cause it stressed me out.
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ROBERTSON: I mean, it is a complicated question, I think. Like, what is the import or what is the use of, like, a Black utopian space? I guess the question that people have nowadays is what does a sustainable social movement look like? Is it something that is multicultural and inclusive? I think the answer is yes (laughter). And I also think it is important to pay attention to the very particular struggles that certain groups have experienced.
But what I wanted to write about were movements that were focused on Black people, not because the point of these movements was to exclude other people, but it was really about reinforcing the dignity of those who were within these spaces.
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: I started to write the book in 2020 and this was before the January 6 insurrection where the term white Christian nationalism really became popularized, I think. And I knew, oh, man, like, I'm writing this book about a group called the Black Christian nationalists and, you know, I'm going to have to explain that it's not just, like, white Christian nationalism, like, with a Black face.
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: But I do think it's important to say that white Christian nationalism and Black Christian nationalism both use the kind of terminology and symbolism of Christianity to mobilize different groups of people.
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: But white Christian nationalists, their mission - their purpose is to impose a very strict sense of what it means to be an American...
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: ...On everybody else, right? If you are not a white Christian heteronormative, et cetera, you pose a threat, I think, to the sort of ideological coherence of white Christian nationalism. Black Christian nationalism is not interested in imposing a sense of, like, what life should be on other people. It was really about carving out spaces for Black people to experience self-empowerment and collective liberation. They had a vision of a kind of beloved community that was very different from the more hate-filled...
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: ...Like, I think, orientation of tried and true white Christian nationalists.
PARKER: Yeah. One's about dignity and the other is about encroachment.
ROBERTSON: Yeah. Encroachment and disenfranchisement and ideological rigidity.
PARKER: Why are so many of the Black utopias that you've written about not better known?
ROBERTSON: I think that so many of these Black movements begin in the shadows a bit because there is something about, like, I think the privacy of creating these spaces that is important. It's kind of like a place like Promised Land, for example. It was this unincorporated town and there are so many spaces like it that have not been formally mapped out. Most of these places are not well known or their histories are not well documented.
We might see that as a tragedy in part, but I actually think that there's a usefulness to being a bit hidden to working underground, especially when you aren't certain whether your work and whether what you stand for will actually be embraced by other people.
PARKER: Yeah. I wanted to talk to you after the election instead of before, because I also - I wanted to know what the results were going to be.
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
PARKER: But I wondered if the election shifted your perspective of your book or what that Black utopia idea could look like now?
ROBERTSON: Yeah. You know, the essay that the book grew out of, I had the idea for that in 2019. So in 2020, when the pandemic happens and when the spate of police violence against Black people is the focus of national attention, I'm already attuned at that moment to what Black utopian initiatives and projects look like. And so when all of the chaos is happening, the things that I'm really looking for in the news are stories about, for example, the proliferation of mutual aid groups that start to pop up in communities of color throughout the country.
I'm paying attention to the importance of, like, food security networks in cities across the country, which are so necessary at times of economic and political turmoil. When it's hard to really envision what the future looks like, that tends to be when these kinds of utopian movements really pick up. And so, you know, now Trump is reelected and although for me personally, it's tiring and sad and scary, I just know that there are so many groups out there whose work is going to continue and is going to pick up, even.
I think of the importance of what was called the solidarity economy, right? Like, which is essentially an acknowledgment that the world that so many people are striving for, the kind of world that I personally want to see, is one that is about sustainability, that is about kind of slowing down and reorienting what we care about, right? I guess I try to find some encouragement in what tends to happen when things go really bad.
PARKER: Oh, Aaron.
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
PARKER: It's stressed me out.
ROBERTSON: I mean, yeah. It's - yeah. It's also important in writing about utopian traditions and histories to be real about it, right? The need for creative responses, I think, to systemic oppression is exhausting (laughter). And the fact that we keep experiencing these moments of shock at what we are, like, as a nation, right? I mean, it feels in some ways that we are regressing (laughter) and it's, like, the alternative is - what? - you sort of stop and stare at the wall and, you know, and don't do anything?
I just - I think in part, I wanted to write the book because I was tired, too, by a lot of what I was seeing in 2016 on. I eventually got to a point where I was thinking, the people who have the - maybe the most right to give up are the people who have done everything within their power to make the world different and better. And so I wanted to - like, when I learned about the Shrine of the Black Madonna, a lot of the Black Christian nationalists who I spoke to for the book, they were my age in the 1960s and '70s when the Vietnam War was raging.
PARKER: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: It was not clear whether, like, Black liberation movements would endure because of the effects of counter surveillance operations, right? - the suppression of these kinds of groups. There were a lot of forces that were marshaled against these young people, too. But I wanted to talk to people who lived through that period, and then also saw what was going on, like, with our country now. Many of them, I think, held onto a sense of hope. They were kind of inspired by what was happening in 2020. And so I - it felt important for me to connect with people who had lived through terrible periods of their own. And I think I took some encouragement from that.
PARKER: All right, I don't mean to be a downer. I apologize.
ROBERTSON: No, no, it's - I think it's - I think it's normal and natural. I mean, I'll speak from a very personal place. So, cousin Kay - who is my grandfather's cousin, you know, in Promised Land - she's getting older, you know, and she wants to ensure that the memory of a place like Promised Land is preserved by younger people. So she has looked to - you know, to me, to her daughter to think of ways that we might use a space like this for good. And I find myself now, like, at a point where I'm really concerned about the attacks on freedom of expression. There are real dangers that the next Trump administration will pose to the attempt to educate people about history as it is, right? It's all extremely scary and threatening. And I wonder, can a place like Promised Land be used as, like, an artist retreat or some kind of co-op where people can come together to tell the very kinds of stories that the Trump administration is going to be trying to suppress, especially throughout the American south. And so I guess the answer to that question is - it's sort of about thinking, like, what do we have in front of us that we can recycle in a way to use for good? It's not that we necessarily need to create entirely new ways of thinking or new political structures. Like, maybe we do, who knows? But it may be a little more manageable to think about, OK, what is it right in front of me that I can do? What are the things that my own interests tap into that can motivate me to try to resist all of the horrible things that might be coming our way. So it's not blind hope, but it's kind of about holding the frustration and the fear and disappointment alongside, like, our creative impulses. And I don't know exactly what that will look like for me, but we'll see.
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PARKER: All right, Aaron Robertson's, "The Black Utopians: Searching For Paradise And The Promised Land In America."
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PARKER: And that's our show. Just a reminder, we'd love to hear what you think of the show. You can help us out by taking a short survey at npr.org/codeswitchsurvey.
DEMBY: And you can follow us on Instagram @nprcodeswitch. If email - if that's more in your bag - ours is codeswitch@npr.org. And you should subscribe to the podcast on the NPR app - wink, wink - or wherever you get your podcasts. It's fine. We're platform agnostic here. But you can also subscribe to the CODE SWITCH newsletter by going to npr.org/codeswitchnewsletter.
PARKER: Signing up for CODE SWITCH Plus is a great way to support our show and public media. And you'll get to listen to every episode sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org/codeswitch.
DEMBY: This episode you're listening to was produced by Christina Cala. It was edited by Leah Donnella, and our engineer was Jimmy Keeley.
PARKER: And a big shout out to the rest of the Code Switch massive, Courtney Stein, Xavier Lopez, Jess Kung, Dalia Mortada, Jasmine Romero, and Veralyn Williams. I'm B.A. Parker.
DEMBY: And I'm Gene Demby. Be easy, y'all.
PARKER: Hydrate (laughter). You're listening to the CODE SWITCH.
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PARKER: Hey, it's B.A. Parker. Before we wrap up, the end of another year is coming up, and our team is looking back at all the deep reporting and compelling stories and conversations about race that we've been able to bring you in 2024 because of your support. We unpacked tropes and conspiracy theories. We brought you the story of America's oldest drag king. And we ask complicated questions like whether bike lanes cause gentrification and how to be a better tourist. And it's all because listeners like you step up to support our work, either by giving to your local station or by joining NPR Plus. NPR Plus has grown a lot this year, and we want to say an extra special thank you to those supporters right now. You know who you are, and we see you. If you don't know what I'm talking about, NPR Plus is a sweet way to support the independent public media you rely on from NPR. When you sign up for a simple recurring donation, you support our mission of creating a more informed public and get special perks from more than 25 NPR podcasts, like sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, and even exclusive and discounted items from the NPR shop and the NPR Wine Club. When you donate today, you join a community of supporters that's deeply curious about the world and eager to challenge assumptions. Join us on the plus side today at plus.npr.org. Thanks.
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