BIPOC: Opposing Anti-Blackness
British colonist and illustrator John White came to Virginia to join the Roanoak Colony in 1585. This drawing of his has been said to feature the Powhatan Indians practicing a ritual for an Algonquin god called Kiwasa.
Closer inspection reveals two different people: Powhatan Indians and another group, perhaps Africans. The other group appears to be wearing a modified thawb (robe) and head-wrap typical of medieval Islamic garb.
Given the period, this controversial image likely depicts Blackamoors who are ceremonially participating with Indians. Are they really worshipping a deity, or might this sacred ritual be offering obeisance to honor a political alliance with a powerful Powhatan Chief (stylistically represented as a person bigger than everyone else)?
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How did the queer enslaved Africans and the indigenous two spirit people survive under colonial invasion and assault? There barely is any information about them in the public domain. Trans ancestors therefore did not seem to exist until the transgender activist, Leslie Feinberg, shattered the invisibility of historic trans people by publishing Transgender Warriors. That is how it became known in America that trans people always have been, and many were Black and Indian. So it's reasonable to presume that their presence and participation always has existed in any community, including those colonized people fleeing Roanoak.
The Smithsonian reports that Native Americans of the early 1600s escaped the colonies by running into the Great Dismal Swamp. They hid and created lives in that 2000 square mile area covering southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina. The communities they formed initially were populated by Native Americans and they later were comprised of African maroons (runaways from slavery). These two communities collaborated together and also interacted with the still enslaved Africans.
According to the archaeological research of Daniel O. Sayers, as cited in the Smithsonian report, these swamp communities predominately consisted of Africans and African Americans between 1680 and 1861 when the Civil War began. It certainly had to be the case that some members of this maroon community were third space, two spirit, or queer.
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According to Jonathan Ned Katz and Tavia Nyong’o, Mary Jones, who claimed to have been born in New York City, just might have been born in the Great Dismal Swamp. This person (not pictured here), assigned male at birth, was called Peter Sewally. She likely moved out of the swamp to New York while others moved from that area to Philadelphia or Chicago, or New Orleans and other big cities.
Miss Jones served as a soldier before she changed occupations. In her next career as a sex worker, she was ridiculed by whites as 'Beefsteak Pete.' She was given that nickname because she used a piece of beef to simulate a vagina when she engaged white men in sex work as a woman. She wore male clothes during the day (probably while conducting personal business), and she did not limit her female attire just to work.
As Jonathan Ned Katz quotes Mary Jones when she appeared as a woman to be sentenced for customer theft in a New York court in 1836:
I have been in the practice of waiting upon Girls of ill fame and made up their Beds and received the Company at the door and received the money for Rooms &c and they induced me to dress in Women's Clothes, saying I looked so much better in them and I have always attended parties among the people of my own Colour dressed in this way -- and in New Orleans I always dressed in this way -- .
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As colonized subjects, the natural alliance that existed between Indians and Blacks since 1493 was torn asunder. This fissure became most pronounced when the formerly enslaved men of African descent (and at least one woman) served America's new military objectives after the Civil War as Buffalo Soldiers. Once or twice the Buffalo Soldiers kept white settlers from encroaching on Indian lands, but this was not their assigned primary role. They were assigned to do the work of Indian control on behalf of the white nation.
Between 1867 and 1896, the Buffalo Soldiers primarily were assigned to kill, contain, and relocate the Indians. In particular, they were ordered to commit genocide by killing off the buffalo, the Indians' main food supply. Working to annihilate Indians was not famous among civilian African Americans. When urban Africans heard that this is what was happening out west, Black voices that recalled and appreciated their former alliance with Native people advocated in their defense.
To illustrate this point, consider a 1911 African American editorial in the Liberator newspaper calling for Indian survival and re-establishment:
"While the Pilgrims were striving for their own freedom they were jeopardizing the freedom of the real owners of the land, the Indians. …A war of extermination was begun; the Indian was pushed from the coast to the plains… as he was pushed inland, hunting, his chief occupation and means of subsistence, was cut off, thus marking the beginning of his end. …the United States in taking away the natural rights of the Indian did him the greatest injustice possible. The Indians were placed upon reservations… Do they realize that the Indian was given the worst when as the original owner his choice would have been the best? …Let us not cast him down as something worthless but give him the advantages and rights that our constitution offers the fittest that he may 'take heart' and start anew his upward struggle for existence. We cannot delay long. For as it was previously shown, the Indian is fast fading away and unless the United States looks to his welfare soon the inevitable must come in the final end of the passing of the aborigines.
Note: This issue of the Liberator was the last monthly installation before it became a weekly newspaper in Los Angeles. With its next issue, the editorial labor of defending blacks, Indians, and other minorities would become topics for a much wider audience.
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The BIPOC acronym stands for Blacks, Indigenous, and other people of color. The indigenous people (Indians) were inhabitants of the Americas before Columbus arrived. People of African descent (collectively called Blacks) who were not here already (given their theorized voyages to the Americas preceding Columbus) either immigrated as free Blacks or were imported as enslaved laborers. While BIPOC may be a current term today, at least for Indians and Blackamoors, it is not a new alliance.
BIPOC relationality emerged as the colonized Native people, the free and enslaved Africans, and other immigrants of color who met in the American colonies shared similar encounters with white racial dominance. These encounters included the dismissal of their spirituality and expectation of their Christian conversion.
BIPOC cooperation and collaboration emerged as these related groups became accountable to each other in their common struggle against white supremacy and heteronormativity. They are still working today to heal the breach that the racial and gender benefactors of colonization installed to divide them.
In this regard, BIPOC trans-spiritual leaders are relationally multifaceted. They work in ethnic, racially diverse, and predominantly white groups and sometimes they join BIPOC coalitions. How their leadership develops is articulated by how their BIPOC trans-spiritual leaders convey their aspirations and face their challenges.
The term 'trans-spiritual' addresses the desire of BIPOC trans leaders serving as religious agents to heal, express their gifts, and evolve their humanity. Further, it concerns how they cultivate their spirits, prevail over captivity, and emerge from the oppression of their communities as world leaders. Yet the BIPOC trans, intersex, and gender non-conforming communities cannot evade the racial politics of their times and places.
Specifically, this project explores how transgender and broader community needs are nurtured by BIPOC trans-spiritual leaders. One learns in this exhibition how determined they are to guide, serve, protect, and promote their constituents and themselves.
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In addition to the Native people and the enslaved Africans, the other people of color are the Latinos (racially mixed identities of whites, blacks, and Indians forged in the Spanish colonies), the East Asians, the South Asians, the Pacific Islanders, and the Hawaiians.
BIPOCs who were neither indigenous nor Black arrived on American shores in sequence from distant lands. They came as conquistadors, as immigrants, or as migrant laborers. Most kept to themselves and remained ethnically distinct, despite widespread intergroup mating in the Americas. Others pursued assimilation and tried to identify as white.
Quite recently, BIPOC people have begun stepping away from whiteness. Seeking to shed and transform the religious racism they encountered during the colonial era or before, the POC part of the BIPOC community share struggles that ally them with Indians and Blacks. This POC group is now splitting between a few who strive to sustain their alliances with Indians and Blacks, and those who prefer to identify only with their own groups, or who prefer alliances with whites.
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Shedding Whiteness
Ethnically diverse BIPOC communities address the trauma and issues they commonly share through a historical relationship with whiteness. Generally, their primary mission is to subvert the anti-blackness practices and sentiments that fuel global white supremacy. BIPOC activists tackle this challenge by building networks and communities that thrive as they recover from a long history of intersectional oppression. Hence, BIPOC coalitions aspire to build a safer world where all are free to be themselves and one in which they no longer see any broken, oppressed people on the world stage. People of every gender expression and sexual persuasion belong to BIPOC communities. BIPOC trans-spiritual leadership is born and cultivated in such communities.
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More Than An Umbrella Term
Note that the BIPOC acronym is mistakenly seen, questioned and rejected by some as an umbrella term. Consider, for instance, a statement issued by the MacArthur Foundation that encourages potential grant applicants to use more inclusive acronyms or names than BIPOC.
Kristen Mack, the Vice President of Communications, Fellows, and Partnerships at MacArthur, published a 'BIPOC doesn't work' policy statement. She warns that such "umbrella terms" can create hostilities where inclusivity was the aim, as she observes:
Although BIPOC includes Asian and Latino/a/x people as well as other racial and ethnic groups, the acronym does not resonate with everyone it was meant to embrace. We must acknowledge that many individuals and communities do not see themselves represented by the term because they are not specifically named. We have heard from people—repeatedly, vehemently, and clearly—that they are offended by its use.
What she and others miss is that BIPOC was not created to be an umbrella term. Rather, it was created to signal how minority groups sequentially encountered inquisitional culture and differ in their relationship to white supremacy. On the one hand, it points to the imported enslaved Africans and to the indigenous Native Americans who initially struggled with the gender politics of whiteness and racism. On the other hand, it notes how the addition of other groups can complicate the problem. This occurs most often when some associate themselves with the obvious non-whites who are Indian and Black while others disassociate from them. This is the political hot potato that major funders and many others would rather not air and would prefer not to contend with. They find it easier to homogenize groups in ways that perpetuate anti-blackness by silencing how differently ranked are these BIPOC relationships to white supremacy.
Displacing BIPOC with some other more inclusive acronym would dampen intergroup conflict among foundation-funded communities. It thereby would facilitate the MacArthur Foundation's learning agenda without them having to take any heat for openly rejecting the BIPOC term. They just have to mention that some of their grantees complain about the BIPOC acronym to get the POCs, Indians and Blacks to reject the BIPOC acronym on behalf of the foundation and the wealth it represents. Like other efforts to name the real problems in America get diffused, BIPOC also may soon fade into oblivion for this reason alone. BIPOC trans-spiritual people therefore must decide where they stand on this issue.
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The BIPOC term calls on non-white groups to coalesce in opposition to anti-blackness and against the binary patriarchal white supremacy that created and thrives on it. Yet, answering this call and making this stand could interrupt certain groups' allegiances to whiteness.
How significant that the most common complaint is that the so-called BIPOC umbrella gives undue importance to African American blacks. Heaven forbid!
Objections to the BIPOC acronym clearly miss or sidestep the point: BIPOC emphasizes the historical tie that a shared experience of white male supremacy forged between all colonized people. It emphasizes how the prior experience of Natives and Blacks shapes the ranking of other people of color who America places on the racial hierarchy above blacks and in anti-black positions that favor and support whiteness. The purpose of the BIPOC colation is to recognize and disrupt all that. Imagine what funding dollars would be withdrawn from the MacArthur Foundation if it conceded to, funded, and advanced this more accurate understanding of BIPOC.
Despite the reactionary view that BIPOC coalitions eclipse Asians and Latinos, some interracial organizations are now creating a united front among all communities of color identified with BIPOC. Moreover, they do so with supportive Latinos, Asians, and Pacific Islanders who support the BIPOC coalition because they recognize the need to counter Asian and Latino anti-blackness.
Perhaps for the first time in history, more non-Black people are less interested in adopting whiteness and are finding a greater interest in making a coalitional stand against promoting anti-blackness. This is a positive trend that can serve BIPOC trans-spiritual leaders, but the reactionary white opposition is jamming Africans, Indians, and other immigrants who subscribe to whiteness and anti-Blackness as a wedge between their immigrant minority communities and domestic minorities.
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Recuperate Blackness and Embrace It
As one Hispanic journalist writes, it is due to the ongoing impact of colonization that "anti-blackness is particularly strong among many Latinx people," but it certainly is not exclusive to them. She delineates a few ways that people of color are set up to compete against each other under white supremacy, with particular attention to mistreating, dismissing, or disregarding people from Africa and their significance in the historical process.
BIPOC affiliation aims to heal the fissure that racism and whiteness rips open by shredding and discarding, not flashing the ticket of anti-blackness that admits them into whiteness.
Whether creating BIPOC media, securing social justice, defending LGBTQI rights, creating economic equity, insisting on liberal education for children, or forging new spiritual capacities and identities, the most committed BIPOC coalitions intend no further collaboration with or accommodation to white supremacy.
Additionally, BIPOC coalitions dare to raise the difficult question and keep it on the table: Why is anti-blackness so strong among minorities of lighter complexion like some Indians, Latinx, and Asians? Why is it also often strong among African immigrants, Native Americans, and even African Americans? What has happened that has caused people around the globe to buy into the practice of stigmatizing blackness and its African cultural formations and genes?
If fighting anti-blackness in an effort to unite all colonized people is the mission of any BIPOC coaltion, then how does it apply to the BIPOC trans-spiritual project? What must BIPOC trans-spiritual leaders know about anti-blackness if they aim to be successful in their aspirations for trans people and their larger communities? Was it only in the United States that this problem happened, or did this anti-blackness predilection originate elsewhere?