The Possibility of a Black Refuge
Carolyn Theresa Nakawungu Batabye
→BFA ID 2028
Honorable Mention Carolyn Theresa Nakawungu Batabye’s essay, “The Possibility of a Black Refuge,” breaks down and analyzes the intersections of refugeetude, Blackness, and racialization in hopes of answering the titular question: Is refuge possible for the Black subject? The voice within the essay shifts dramatically from the standard academic at the start to the reflective academic human to the memoirist / storyteller. Carolyn experiments boldly, interspersing Malcolm X’s and her own words in one section and using personal narrative to demonstrate the central argument in another. —Meredith Barrett
Filmmaker: “Why didn’t you just want to get away somewhere and sit down and write your books? Why didn’t you want to do that?”
Baldwin: “Because I’m better than that.”
Filmmaker: “But you don’t have to be better than that.”
Baldwin. “Oh, I do.”
Filmmaker: “So you don’t agree then? I mean, when people say, ‘Oh, it’s ok for him. He’s escaped.”
Baldwin: “What have I escaped?” [He begins to smile.] “Where, anyway, would I go to escape? To your country?” [He pauses, continues to enunciate each word with his brows and a nod of his head.] “Would I get a political asylum here? Where would a fleeing Black man go if he wanted to escape?”
—James Baldwin, Meeting the Man, 1970
The definition of a refugee is written in international law, as per the 1951 Refugee Convention. A refugee is a person who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of [their] nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail [themself] of the protection of that country.” Anyone can be a refugee, become a refugee, live as a refugee; no one is exempt. However, under the UNHCR’s conceptualization of the refugee in the Western nation state, a Black person cannot and isn’t designed to be conceived as a refugee, as the neocolonial structure that continues to define Blackness cannot conceptualize the Black individual as a being who is vulnerable, worth protecting, or deserving of refuge. Ultimately, the Western nation state has no place for refugees with historically racialized identities, and considers them a different status of refugee altogether. From its conception, the United States has been built by an unwilling subject, the Black bodies brought over to the continent by the transcontinental slave trade. Since then, one can conceptualize the following descendants of these persons as refugee subjects, unable to shed their socially foreign status despite being generationally removed from their ancestors who were initially displaced. Black identity in the US can be consistently defined by the precarity of seeking refuge; as such, one can conceptualize the Black individual in the US as simultaneously an internally displaced person and a quasi-refugee subject. Due to decades of persecution, discrimination, and marginalization, there has been no refuge in sight for Black individuals within and outside the US. Still, the Black identity can not be conceptualized as a typical refugee subject due to their racial identity and fixed status as quasi-citizens, quasi-
human, quasi-existence.
Even outside the Black Americans’ quasi-refugee status, outside the United States’ imposition of race on the Black body, the Black subject still cannot find a place to seek refuge. It’s simply not meant to. The Black subject contains a multitude of Black experiences, impossible to define in a concise and timely manner. There is the African subject, the Afro-Caribbean subject, the Afro-European subject, and so many more variations of the Black experience that are impossible to name. Regardless of specificity, the Black subject is racialized, and racialized bodies, specifically the Black body, are not meant to be conceived as the same genre of refugee as their nonracialized counterparts. While racial discrimination is explicitly banned under the ICERD, racialized bodies are not bodies meant to seek refuge; rather, they are bodies that are expected to undergo strife under a capitalist, imperialist labor regime. The conception of Blackness, regardless of placement, is inherently incapable of assimilation. The Black subject moves carefully through a world unable to conceive them beyond their skin color and the various connotations it imposes upon them.
This entire framework raises various questions about Black identity, refugeetude, and the concept of finding refuge in a world designed to exclude the Black subject. How does one conceptualize Blackness in the refugee framework? Can one truly be Black and a refugee if no refuge from racial persecution is possible? How does the Black body seek refuge if the typical conceptualization of refugee is unapplicable, and how can one rectify their position as a Black person in refugeetude? How are Black individuals globally positioning themselves in their quasi-refugeetude, or are they rejecting it altogether? Ultimately, putting everything aside, is it truly possible for one to be Black and a refugee?
This paper takes multiple points of departure across the Black diaspora to engage with concepts of Black subjectivity, refugeetude, perceptions of Black identity, and other related concepts. I reference both Black authors discussing their own subjectivity and non-Black individuals who produce relevant scholarship. The scholarship I will be in dialogue with includes policy analysis, first-hand accounts, and theoretical concepts.
[…]
Personal Black Subjectivity, Rehumanization, and a Further Politics of Incorrigibility
I am no refugee. I am frankly, rather privileged. In this, I think of Patricia Collins Preface to the first edition of Black Feminist Thought, in which she asks herself, “How can I as one person speak for such a large and complex group as African American women?” Similar thoughts were coursing through me as I developed this paper. For herself, Collins concluded that she cannot and should not, as each woman must speak for herself. I agree with this sentiment, but it didn’t feel exactly right for my purposes. I cannot and should not speak for everyone, as that would be absurd for a multitude of reasons, but I feel I should, just this once. With these thoughts, I figured I could take the approach of those who came before me, referring to a general amalgamation of their Black experience in their attempts to assert themselves (and, by association, Blackness) into a conversation so dominated by those outside the Black experience. However, this didn’t feel exactly right either; this conclusion didn’t sit well in my thoughts or flow smoothly into spoken word.
In this disruption, I figured I would return to a central theme of this paper, the usage of language to convey meaning. Collins has another helpful thought on this, inserting herself into the conversation of Black feminisms by using the personal inclusionary “i,” “we,” and “our” in contrast to the “objective” “they” and “one.” I found this fascinating, as much like Collins, I have been thoroughly trained out of using more personal, familiar, identifying language in fear of being too personal, essentially too subjective. Academia favors objectivity, and my initial education reflects this. Collins ultimately reconciles subjectivity and objectivity, flowing freely between the two tenses as the situation demands. These transitions allow her to possess multiple consciences, another thing I find utterly fascinating, as it forces me to compete with an internal dilemma directly relevant to the Black subject: urges to assimilate competing with one’s inner desires for well, whatever one may yearn for.
Is This a Refuge?
All of this conjecture ultimately returns to the titular question: can all these processes constitute refuge? All of this returns to Baldwin’s simple response, “Where would a fleeing Black man go if he wanted to escape?” In truth, I’ve meandered on this question far longer than what would be deemed appropriate. In my meandering, I returned to the personal, my own Black subjectivity, and where I would place my own ethos in the conversation. I reached a generational intersection of a Ugandan American.
This past summer, I spent weeks at my cousin’s house, with Gloria, her baby Reggie, and my 69-year-old aunt, Regina. I spent my summer here because I was tired of enduring my strained relationship with my mother, and I wanted to chace refuge from a house filled with horrible memories. Everyone in that suburban house was from my father’s side of the family, and it felt like I could breathe for a bit and familiarize myself with something foreign. I was used to spending time with my mother’s family after all, rowdy, caring people, and I feel an inherent disconnect with them. I wanted to feel grounded, for a change.
I slept at the foot of Auntie Regina’s bed, in a worn metal fold-out cot with well-loved bedsheets. I woke in the morning, always after her, to her watching the news in the living room. As a dutiful semi-Ugandan, I would offer to make her tea, and she would accept. Somehow, this entire act didn’t feel as demeaning as it usually did; it felt like an expression of love. I would fix us both a cup, and we would spend time in the same space, sipping our tea and watching some case, story, whatever was going on in the land of the free at the time. It was so tranquil and so foreign that I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. That somehow, this was all an act meant to make me drop my guard, and once I was sufficiently duped, everyone would walk in from some foreign space in the house and laugh at me until they were sick. Her gentle care felt constantly dangled in front of me, washed over my face, and filled my being, until I would finally puke it all out. I felt so, so scared.
Another morning of our routine passed, and another, and another, and no imaginary peanut gallery had pointed at me. I offered my Auntie Regina tea as she sat and watched the news, some political coverage of the latest detrimental policy Trump wanted to roll out. She thanked me for the tea and paused. I still stood, waiting for whatever I was waiting for, and passively gazing at the news to join her in media consumption. It was beautiful outside, and a lovely wash of warm sunlight coated the grey living room. So, so beautiful. She continues to gaze at the TV and says, “Sometimes, I wonder why we came here, if it was just going to turn into this. Maybe we should’ve stayed in our own country if it was going to be like this.” She says this casually, almost as if she’s discussing whatever crime case will be on next. This woman carried her three children across her back through bullets to find refuge, and she’s wondering if she should’ve just stayed with the totalitarianism she was familiar with rather than taste a quasi-refuge and have it brutally ripped away. The enemy she knows. We were alone together, in that room, I think. And I’m struck by the question I’ve been attempting to flee from: “Why am I here?”
I am a first-generation American, born to Ugandan immigrants who individually left their home country and found love in the land of the free. The land of the free is the land of opportunity, the land of the free and the home of the brave. They sought a refuge from the constantly changing tide of the Ugandan political landscape of the 1980s. I wonder if my mother felt brave enough when she was sent here. Brave when she weathered the first snowfall, brave when she gave birth to her children, brave when she talks boisterously on the phone. Bravery is something she intended to instill into her children, coupled with exceptionalism. The bravery to be exceptional as a Black individual in predominantly white institutions, looking back. And since this is what she strived for, I attempted bravery.
My mother was always very proud of the compliments she would get on her girls, properly dressed, well-mannered little things we were. We were so exceptional, so docile, so American that she would sometimes hear us speak to each other and laugh to herself. She would save anecdotes of our sitcom bickering and broadcast them across the world, to show off her proper American girls who would surely be great in some way someday in the not-so-distant future. We were so American that any attempt to adopt Ugandan mannerisms would send her into uncontrollable laughter. This wouldn’t prevent her from instilling these mannerisms, of course, and my days were filled with learning how to greet my elders properly, among other things. I never felt brave in these moments, but I persisted nonetheless. I’m supposed to be a proper, Ugandan American girl after all, and these types of girls shake off whatever offense is committed against them. And being Black in America, there were plenty of offenses, so much so that I felt like I was coated in tar rather than living in skin. I could never shake the intersections of who I was, so I compartmentalized them, shelving my problems for an imaginary future me who would be ready to deal with them.
I haven’t run in years. I ask god, save me, save me! Deliver me from suffering, from pain. I hear nothing; perhaps he really is the white man’s god. I don’t even care anymore. I feel it, restless, a live wire under my skin. As I sit, I reconcile with the fact that I am furious. I want to break something, anything, I want to scream until I am hoarse! But I cannot, I should not, I have something to maintain, even in my solitude; I must remain unobtrusive.
I run only 20 seconds or so. I realize that I’m not stopped by exhaustion; the only one who can see me is myself. I scream, scream so loud I likely scared someone in the dormitories I’m breezing by. For once, I do not care, I’ve never felt so free! What joy, this must be joy! Is everyone experiencing this all the time? I want this; my entire being in this moment is characterised by want, by greed, and frankly, I didn’t care anymore. Why am I doing any of this?
Logic overtook me once more, and I
realised I must pay heed to traffic signals, speeding cars, and the turns of pedestrian concrete. My steam cooled, and I settled into a crisp, restless jog down the hill to my dormitory.
Frustrated, I settled on the most straightforward analogy of the situation I found myself in: I opened the box, and I let every little evil thing that may lurk within me free upon the world, if I taste a carefree freedom, that I may never be able to return. If I unleash what’s inside, and I’m placed back into a situation in which I must conform, what if I cannot shove all these newfound urges back into myself? What would become of me? Where would I go then? Where? Once more, I return to the question Baldwin raised: “Where would a fleeing Black man go, if he wanted to escape?” The questions I’ve been running from: “Why am I here?, What would become of me? Where would I go?” If I cannot truly escape the pressures imposed upon myself by white supremacy, even in the land of the free and the home of the brave, the land my parents strived towards for some hope of refuge, of promise, where would those across the diaspora go? In this, I think back to the moment I shared with my aunt. We were alone, two individuals displaced through space and time by forces outside our control, but we were alone together. The refuge we sought in that moment may not have been all-encompassing. Still, it was our own temporary Black refuge, where one experiences one of the most pivotal emotions they can feel toward another human being: seen.
NOTES
This paper and its contents are being actively iterated on, edited, and developed. As such, this is not the final version of the paper; the contents are subject to change and evolve as I do.
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Black refugeetude is most certainly a term I would like to expand upon, and one that would likely receive its own section if I had all the time I would like. Since we do not, I would like to leave you with some final musings while you digest and analyse the term in the future. Is Black Refugeetude truly the right terminology? How would it interact with Negritude? How does a non-Black subject conceptualize their own relation to Black Refugeetude? And most importantly, is it possible to construct a true, safe refuge for those who are marginalized?
Carolyn Theresa Nakawungu Batabye realized refuge is closer than she thought.