Blacking (Out) Vermont: Documenting Black Queer Space through Digital Publics

Keywords: black geographies, black queer, Vermont, black space, documenting
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

According to the 2020 United States Census, Vermont remains the second whitest state in the U.S. with a white population of 94.2% and a Black population of just 1.4%. Much public discourse surrounding the racial politics of Vermont tends to emphasize the contradictory imagery of pervasive liberal and progressive sentiments, such as an abundance of Black Lives Matter signs, alongside its documented miniscule Black population. While these conversations offer meaningful and necessary critiques of Vermont’s status as a progressive state, these conversations often miss that, despite a small population Black life is unfolding and Black communities are making space for themselves within the state.
This project aims to intervene the (limited) academic data and literature on Black Vermont by considering the already-present creative and sometimes subversive ways in which Black queer and trans folks in Vermont make space for themselves and their wider communities (even when not always Black and queer together) while living in the state. While the larger project centers physical, intellectual, and digital spacemaking, here I want to focus on how the digital-public documentation (through projects like a Black gay-operated podcast and a largely Black-organized QTPOC social-health initiative) of Black queer lives and spaces in Vermont highlights how Black (queer) approaches to space, place, and memory make life livable and space usable in a state where they are often assumed to not belong or even exist in any meaningful way.