Who are you?

I'm Airica Camille Rochelle Thomas. I am a PhD student at Northwestern University, getting my degree in linguistics. Specifically, I would say my focus is sociolinguistics, and I am most interested in sort of the experiences and the language use of Black people. My people. Yeah. 

How do you identify?

I identify as Black. I also identify as non-binary. So I was assigned female at birth, but there was a point where I identified as transmasculine, and then just sort of like the more broad trans. And specifically, I think my gender is non-binary and agender. 

How do you want to/prefer to be seen?

I do not like to be perceived just because it always comes with a sort of hefty dose of misgendering. Who was it? It was a music artist; I want to say, Sam Smith. They're also nonbinary, and they had an interview, and a quote from that interview was: “To be nonbinary is to constantly be misgendered.” And I really felt that most of the time, I don't really care. And I know that most people will perceive me as female and then just assume that I identify that way and go from there. And then there are some cases where I have been perceived as male, and like I said, most of the time I don't care, but some of the time, it's just sort of really annoying and disheartening, and so I would rather not be perceived at all. 

Okay, that makes sense. I've heard. There are a lot of people I've heard that say they do not want to be perceived. 

Yeah, I think. I think right now my display name on either Twitter or Mastodon is Perceivant. Like a. Like a con. Like a conjunction of perceive, not just perceivant. 

That sounds like a constant hassle, around perception, I mean.

Yeah. Because so the thing is, I'm very comfortable with my own body. And the thing is, a lot, like, a lot of trans people experience body dysphoria and gender dysphoria. I. I have grown to be very comfortable with my own body, and I sort of. I love my own body because it's mine and I'm in it and I can do what I want with it. But I came to a realization in, like, my early 20s that I couldn't stop other people from perceiving me how they perceived me. There were things I could do to mitigate it. Like dressing and behaving a certain way would have it leaning more towards feminine or more towards masculine or, you know, landing in the middle where it's just kind of like a question mark and people look at you like, what are you? 

But that can be a dangerous middle ground to find. So I came to this sort of realization in my early 20s that like, I can't help how people perceive me. I can't stop them from doing it. Like, I can't make them not see me. So it was sort of a matter of trying to present myself as authentically as possible and doing the best to be comfortable and happy with how I presented myself and focusing on how I do it and trying to think less about the how it's received. It's a pretty tough order. 

Could you tell me why you live in a city?

I live in a city because I was born and raised in a city. I like the sort of amenities of living in a city. I like the traversability of living in a city with a decent public transportation system, which, like, that's a whole other rant. I could go into the inefficacy of public transportation systems, especially in the United States. But, like, I did undergrad in D.C., And I fucking hate the D.C. Metro. It's an abomination. 

What did you dislike so much about it? 

It was ineffective. The routes were poorly planned and oftentimes like redundant; fare was absurdly ridiculous considering that I was a student getting work study, so not exactly like rolling in bank here. So, in my second semester of my sophomore year, I want to say I studied abroad in Madrid and their public transportation system is so good, and I will admit, even the public transportation system in Barcelona, also just so good, so efficient, so much cleaner, much more on time. 

The way that things were set up in Madrid is it's like you paid €40 for a monthly pass, and that gave you unlimited access to all the trains, the metro and then the Renfe, which is their commuter train, which is sort of like the difference between the L and the Metra here, except it's so much more efficient than Metra because it was like a high-speed rail. So there I volunteered at a pet spa, which was like an hour away by normal metro, but 15 minutes by the renfe. And so it was like, I just pay €40 a month and I can take all the trains, buses, commuter trains that I need to. And it's just to then come back to the US where it's like Metra is constantly raising their prices, and they price by zone. 

So the further away you live from a place, the more the ticket costs, which is so fucking infuriating. But then CTA fare is also going up, CTA service, especially post quarantine. They have so many staff shortages that the trains and buses don't really run regularly. They're always late. It's such a pain to have to go anywhere. But, like, I do like that there is a public transportation system, because I've lived in very small towns before. After I did undergrad, [I did this program]. There's this program through the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Education where they want native English speakers to come and help teachers. You're basically a classroom assistant. You help teachers in the English classroom. So we did, like, science and art and biology or whatever, math too. 

I was in a very small town called Canamero in Estremadura, in the westernmost autonomous community of Spain, the mountain area. And that was a town of, I think, less than 5,000 people. And there was a main road that was the highway that ran through town. And so I worked at a school in that town, Canemero, and then in the town, like, a little bit north of it. And I had to catch the one bus that took the older kids because the only school they had in can was, like, basically, like, grade school, but the middle school and high school were in the next town over. So, I had to catch the bus in the morning with the kids on the days that I worked at the other school. 

You had to have a car, otherwise there was no public transportation or anything, because the town was so small and walkable that it would have been hell for there to be any sort of public transportation, because it was all hills and steep inclines and stuff. So I've lived in small places before, and I prefer to live in a city where there's decent enough public transportation, where there's tons of activities and things to do and places to go and people to see. But I like living in cities peripherally. Like, I would never want to live downtown. I would never want to live in the Loop. That just sounds like hell on earth. That sounds like the single most stressful way to exist in a city to me. So I would rather live in a more residential neighborhood. You know, like, this neighborhood's decent. 

It's pretty diverse. But I would also consider this area to be pretty black. I have two dogs and it's very pet friendly in this neighborhood. So I like that the lake is two blocks that way. It's walkable to get to a lot of different places, but also to get to the L. And I, like, honestly, even this building feels like a little too big for me for the number of neighbors. Like, I would love to find someone who's renting out the top floor if they're too flat or something. But for now, like, this is a. This is a relatively small apartment building with a decent sized apartment. Like, that's the kind of living I can do. Like, the idea of living in a high rise in the Loop is just disgusting to me. 

It's where I feel more…most comfortable. Like I said, I was born and raised in a city, so I know it pretty well. I feel comfortable in the places I've come to inhabit. 

Can you tell me about a memorable urban experience you have had?

I mean, I have, like, lots of little anecdotes and stuff. So one thing I remember, like I said, I have two dogs, and they're both big, but they're also both pretty distinct looking. They're not super common breed mixes. So any sort of interactions that they have with small children is really fun and pretty cute. So there's an elementary school a block that way, and it shares land or a lot with a Chicago public park. So there are kids around pretty much all the time. So if I'm taking them on a walk in the morning or if we're going to a friend's house or to the dog park or something, there is now, like a set group of children who know my dog and come and say hi and pet them and ask to give them treats every time they see us. 

And the thing that I like most about it that's like, quietly fascinating to me is whoever is raising these kids has taught them really good and proper dog etiquette, which is something a lot of kids don't know because they will police their friends. They'll be like, you gotta ask every time if you wanna pet them, even if you've pet them before, and don't make too loud noises and make sure they can see you coming, and blah, blah, blah. And it's just really fascinating to watch these tiny little humans be like, okay, this is how you dogs, right? And they're all like. They're all like, ruin. And it's ruin. And they all come running from wherever they're playing to come pet them. And they love it. They soak it up. 

And that I would consider particularly urban is just, I guess the sort of the acronym of MYOB. Just mind your own business. There have been so many times where I've seen vaguely alarming things in the vicinity of the Howard station. Like, one time I was headed to campus and I was walking to the Howard station, and right outside the door, there was just this puddle of blood. Like a pretty substantial puddle of blood. And then also, one of the windows in the door was cracked and had blood on it, like someone had hit their head. I was genuinely like, you know what? Not my business. I don't want to know. So, you know, you skirt around the puddle of blood and you swipe your transit pass and you go wait on the platform and you don't ask questions or think about it. 

Oh that is very visceral

Yes. So, yeah, the good and the bad. You've got your cute, fluffy, sweet fluff piece where the kids in the neighborhood love my dogs and they love the kids. And then you have. I don't know what happened here, but it was something and it was probably bad. Have you ever just come across, like. Like a scene and you're like, something happened here and it was not good? 

 Well, I thought that happened the other day, but it turned out it [wasn’t that bad]. I thought it was blood. I was walking down the street from my apartment going to work, and I just saw, like, a bunch of red stuff on the ground. And I was like, oh, God, what happened? But I think it was ketchup. I saw a ketchup bottle nearby and I was like, oh, thank god. Thank goodness. But, like, I was Like, I was prepared for it to be blood. 

In my case, it was definitely blood. It was definitely. Well, the thing is, when I came back from campus later that day, there was this white dude who…I'm not sure if he was homeless or [if] he had gotten mugged, but I think he was the source of the blood. He looked really beat up and he had a huge bandage on his face, on his head, like, on his forehead. And I was like, oh, shit, maybe that's his blood. But, like, again, again, Mind your own business. I did not ask. I didn't ask. But there was another time it was also in proximity to the Howard Station. I came across this scene, and it literally was just like an overturned wheelchair, a scattered box of dry pasta, and a kind of dull kitchen knife. And I was like: “Something happened here. It probably was bad. MYOB.” Just eternally minding my own business. 

It's a self-preservation tactic. After a certain point, you have to have an understanding of minding your own business because it's when you start doing Scooby Doo white people shit, and you start being like, well, let me figure out what happened here, or let me investigate. That's how you get caught up in shit and get hurt. [Minding your own business]…is a need if you live in a big city. 

How supportive do you feel the city is to your needs?

I feel like the city does, like, the bare minimum. Well, I feel like in some ways it's less the city I have a problem with and more like my management company, like my landlord. But in some ways, I feel like the city doesn't necessarily have, like, [my] best interests in mind. This might seem weird. I have. I'm really peculiar about garbage cans, like, trash cans, like public trash cans. And it's because I have two dogs. And so basically, whenever I take them out for a walk, I keep, like, a mental map of where every dumpster and. Or public trash can is so that I know the nearest place that I can drop a bag of poop if I'm out walking them. 

Like the big green ones?

Yeah, the big green ones; usually the big green ones in the park, the blue ones sometimes for recycling. And then the black ones are usually in alleys behind people's houses. And then apartment buildings typically have at least one dumpster. So I kind of keep a mental map of where all of that stuff is, just because I don't feel like walking around for 20 minutes holding a bag of dog shit. But having that mental map means I know how sparse it is and how few public trash cans there are outside of green spaces. So, outside of Chicago public parks. And it's a very big juxtaposition because Evanston is right on the other side of this cemetery here. And we walk that way sometimes. And just about every street corner in Evanston has a public trash can. 

And then you come into Chicago and there's just this dearth, this complete lack of public trash cans outside of Chicago public parks. And so then when I see like trash on the sidewalk or trash in the streets, I like, it's annoying to see. But without such easy access to trash cans, like, I kind of get why people don't bother. Like, I don't personally agree with it. And I'm the kind of person where if I have trash, I'm going to take it to where I know there's a trash can, even if it means I got to hold on to it for longer than I would want to. But, like, when I see trash in the streets, you know, like, I'm like, well, not everyone knows where every public trash can or dumpster is like I do. 

So if they're like, I have trash and I don't know, I don't see a place to put it, they just leave it on the street. So there are ways in which I feel like the city could be more accommodating. Like in this area, one thing I like is there are a number of community gardens, like just plots of land. And you, like, sign up, and you can get your own little plot or your own little section and grow whatever you want during the growing seasons. And I think that's pretty cool. And I like that. I like the idea of like, sort of self-sufficiency and sustainability and being able to grow our own food and not necessarily having to rely on, you know, price gouged produce in the Jewel or whatever. But I also, like, it is still a city. 

I think there's, especially in this area, because I think of the sort of more significant black and African immigrant population, there's a lot of times where they're just like cop cars loitering around doing nothing. I was home once…and if cop car stops, so what happens is this is a terrace [type of street]. And I don't know why they built it. I think it's because of the cemetery. So this is Juneway Terrace, but like this curve part of it is technically Ashland. But, like, if emergency service vehicles come this way, all of the light sort of gets trapped in this corridor. And I can see it from my bedroom, [and also] if I'm in the living room or my bedroom or even my office, because that's where the windows are in the apartment. If there are flashing lights, it's very obvious to see. 

So I was home, I want to say, a couple weeks ago, me and my girlfriend were home and were in, like, bed reading. And then suddenly there were these flashing lights and we came in the living room to watch. The cops had pulled over a driver right in front of the building. And, like, four squad cars showed up. Yeah, like four different squad cars showed up. And you just had all of these white cops loitering around this car. And the person in the car was black. And it wasn't until, like, the end of the sort of confrontation slash ordeal that I realized that I recognized them.

There's an interracial white and black couple that lives in the apartment building next door that I recognize because they have two Chihuahuas and two Dobermans, and Roo hates their Chihuahuas and Ein hates the Dobermans. So I've never spoken to them. Okay, so the thing is, Ein is racist against all German breeds, Dobermans, Rottweilers and German Shepherds. It is on sight for them. I don't know why he does not like them. 

It wasn't until, like, the end of that confrontation that I realized that I recognized them as neighbors from that building. But they had them stopped there for, like, at least 20 minutes. And I didn't go down and go outside to see what they were talking about, but they had them stopped there for so long and were just like, talking to them through the window and making gestures and pointing down this way. And I think the person was saying, “Yeah, no, I live right there.” So I don't know what they pulled them over for, but it's just like that is another way in which I feel the city is. 

It's part of the experience of existing in a city and being black is just being hyper aware of things like where the cops hang around for no reason and what to do. Especially I want to say since like 2016, it's just been something I've been more cognizant of. Like if I see cops holding, detaining, talking to someone, especially if that person is black, I will stop and wait and watch until they disperse. Because it's just like, because that very well could just turn from a routine stop or whatever into another case of police brutality like on a fucking dime. And I want them to be afraid. I want them to be afraid of accountability and know that there are people watching their actions and so that they should not be trigger happy fucks for once in their lives. 

And I like to think that it's a good thing that I'm doing. I'm like, I like to think that it has some effect. But yeah, like there, as much as I like to live in cities and as much as I'm used to living in cities, it does come with all of these little things. And some of them are good, and some of them are annoying, and some of them are bad, unfortunately, to an almost lethal extent. 

Do you feel included in the city (as a person of value)?

In my communities, yes. In the city as a whole, not necessarily. 

And why not necessarily? 

I just feel so kind of what we talked about a little during your interview (Airica interviewed me for their PhD research). I just feel like there's so many systemic inequalities in place that I know that I'm not like, I'm not a part of the demographic that the politicians in the city are looking to secure the favor of. Like, I'm not a rich white person. I'm not like, I'm not like a rich middle-aged, straight CIS dude with generational wealth who is going to start funding X, Y, and Z. You know, I am none of those things. And so it's sort of like a, this is their city, and I'm just living in it to some degree. 

I feel like things are slowly changing in the sense that maybe politicians and policymakers and people are the ones behind how the city functions and how it works, and the services it provides. Maybe they're coming to understand that they also need to care about the non middle class or lower-class residents. 

I'm not a part of the demographic that's lining the pockets of the people who are making the policies and enforcing these laws or whatever. But I like to think that in recent years, politicians, policymakers, the people in charge, I like to think they've become more cognizant of appealing to wider demographics, wider, not whiter, but more demographics than just sort of the middle to upper class, white financially supporting people. So the thing is, I feel like people, in general, are starting to become more aware of what it means to live under a capitalist state and are becoming more aware of the ways in which that disenfranchises them and are becoming less tolerant of its existence. And so like you asked earlier, the ways in which I feel the city does or doesn't support me. 

So like the housing crisis and just the way that these property managers are price gouging rents it's making the city unlivable because people can't afford to find places to rent on these salaries that they're getting. Which ties into the fact that minimum wage is still not high enough to meet the minimum cost of living estimated for Chicago, which I think like the minimum cost of living for Chicago as like, a single individual is like $50,000. And there are so many people who are [not] making [that much]. Not that I'm not even making $50,000. We, the grad students at my university, unionized, and we got them to sign a contract. And I'm making more now than I was the previous four years of my degree, but it's still not a living wage. And that's absolutely wild to me. 

The fact that I know that the university has the money, considering how much they invest into, like, sports and shit like that. But they're like, well, “We can't give it to you grad students. We're supposed to exploit your labor, you know.” And so, like, the fight that we put on for getting a contract signed, and we did so much and we got it signed. And like, yeah, it's more now than it was before, but it's still not a living wage. It's still not financial stability. And that might be, you know, like the specific case with me and my specific department and my specific school and my specific university, which is technically in Evanston, but they do have a Chicago campus. 

You know, it might be my specific situation, but I think it's a shared situation, again with so many people in my general age group, where it's like, we're not making the bare minimum we need to survive in this city. Rent's just getting higher while the properties that they're raising rent for aren't getting better. Like, my rental company has raised my rent by, like, minimum 50 to $75 every year that I've been with them. And it's doubly infuriating now that I'm in a unit with fewer amenities. Like, they. I just signed my lease renewal for next year, and they're raising rent to 1715. 

I have no in unit laundry, and I'm on radiator heat, and it's infuriating. So I. I think there are ways the city could be better. Part of me is like, yeah, I know that there are people who are working to change the system from the inside or whatever, but I am more and more, with each passing day, week, month, year, more and more into the idea of there needs to be some sort of total collapse in which we just do away with the bullshit that we have now and rebuild it from the ground up. 

Because what we have now, even if we change, its foundations are still rooted in upholding these systemic inequalities where depending on your race, on your age, on your gender, your sexuality, [there are] just so many ways for you to be shoved down and sort of, you're trudging through life day to day because there are so many things that you have to carry on your shoulders that, you know, you don't even have the energy to put up the fight anymore necessarily. 

That's very deep. Maybe I'll ask you about that later. Outside of this, like just about. I'm. I'm curious about. I've been thinking a lot like human nature, like, why do we, I wonder if we have systems that are [like this]. If we do away with capitalism and everything that comes with that, would we still arrange ourselves in a different way or will we still find a way to build hierarchy? Because I know that's something that Octavia Butler wrote about. I wonder if that. I don't know if she's right, but I'm curious to know. And this has nothing to do with this, so you don't have to answer it. But like, do you think, what do you think would, if we're able to do that, like, what do you think would happen? Do you think it would be a different way of hierarchy or do you think, like, what would, what do you think would happen?

So the thing is I think that human nature at its core is more socialist than capitalist. And I think that when we look at, you know, the prehistoric human remains that are in museums and stuff, where they're like, yeah, no, it, well, so one, it was the way that Darwin and Darwinism and the sort of survival of the fittest was kind of tweaked to fit a capitalist society where it's like you have to step on the back of others to lift yourself. 

The fact of the matter is we have so much archaeological evidence of prehistory humans caring for those in need instead of just leaving them to die, you know, So I think human nature, we're social creatures and so I do think like naturalistically at our core, we want to like uplift each other and help each other because we know that depending on one another is how we have a greater chance of surviving. But I think that capitalism has become so entrenched in the modern human sort of mental state that I think even if everything crashed and burned tomorrow, and we're like, okay, we're not going to do capitalism anymore, because obviously that fucking failed, I think we would. To lay the groundwork for something better and non-exploitative or less exploitative, something that's truly genuinely beneficial to the largest majority of the population. 

Laying the groundwork for that would have to be so delicate and I don't think we would get it right on the first try. You know, like there would have to be like some obvious tweaking because it's so much of just like the basis of capitalism, the idea of like these concepts of currency, but also things like interest and high yield saving and all of the ways and things that you can basically just build wealth off of this imaginary money because of things like the stock market, which is something we made up and then decided to make it to make like finances dependent upon it. 

And it's like that so much of the stuff like the characteristics of capitalism is just so firmly like I feel like even if everything blew up tomorrow and were left standing in the dust of capitalism, people would still be like, “But I want my money to mean something. I want the things I have to have value.” And so much of it would be built on the idea that there are only so many people who can have value. So you have to do whatever you can to be one of those people. Even if it means disenfranchising and seriously burdening other people around you. And I think for us to get to sort of a more socialist state, sort of a more collective well being because it's not, it's in part capitalism, but it's also just the very individualistic nature of American culture. 

So I think there needs to be like genuinely like these sort of areas of community building and understanding of how to interact with other humans in a way that's not just beneficial for you but like isn't detrimental to anyone else. And I think that's super complicated. Like, I don't have the answer. So like for example, like defunding the police and like prison abolition. I'm a person who believes in both of these things, but I'm also a person who believes that there are some crimes where the very nature of the crime means that a person cannot be rehabilitated. 

No, like when it comes to things like sexual assault and rape, pedophilia, those kinds of things, I don't, for me I can't see any recourse for rehabilitation because even if you then made it so that they're like, I guess a non-practicing pedophile or serial rapist, it's still like, even if they're not actively hurting people. The nature of what they are is not something that can be rehabilitated and [would allow them to] re-enter society in any sort of helpful or meaningful way to me. And prison as it currently exists is not in any way rehabilitative. It's. It's more than anything where you go for your soul to die. So then it's like, well, what do we do with these people? And it's like, yeah, no, back before capitalist times, indigenous sort of living situations, it was very much a situation of “These are the kind of people we like, push off of the ice flow in the Antarctic. These are the kind of people we leave to die in the desert, you know, where it's like, we don't kill them directly, but we exile them.” 

We say, “You can't be here with us because we know that the nature of them is to cause hurt and suffering wherever they are.” But like, I don't know that there's a way to do that sort of humanely in the modern era. Like, I, personally, am a pretty big proponent of victims being able to get back at their abusers or attackers lethally or non lethally. But that very much can lead to a slippery slope. Yeah, you know, like, there's the whole, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind or whatever. 

But, like, the answer isn't just to punish those people. Instead, I do feel as though some things should be punishable, and those two offenses are pretty much at the top of that list. It's so much of what those are is just to cause suffering in like weird power plays. Especially when it comes to things like serial rapists, where it's like, there's no need being met there. It's about power and having power over others in some of the most visceral and carnal and fucked up ways. 

What would make the city more convenient for you?

Affordable housing, fucking universal health care, more affordable groceries. I would love it if the city did more in its efforts to recycle or cut down on waste that goes to landfills. I know that there are some cities out there that do like curbside composting or whatever, things of that nature. But also, I personally think that if we move away from being so car-focused. Like Henry Ford is rotting in hell and I hope he's having a horrible time. If we move more money into bettering public transportation and having less dependency on cars, I think so many other things can follow in the wake of that. That would be good, environmentally speaking, like on your own to this point. 

I think you should have a conversation with Arliss (their brother) because he has very strong feelings about like high speed rail and how it should be implemented and how we should, like logically speaking, considering how big this country is, we should have transcontinental high speed rail and we don't. And like Chicago, public transportation for all its faults is still one of the better public transportation systems in the country. 

Which is sad. 

Which is sad. Which is like, well then, god, what the hell do they do in other places? And the answer is so much worse. They just do so much worse. It's like you might as well not have public transportation for how ineffective your public transit system is. 

But then also in terms of like urban design, like it's not personal to me, but just accessibility and ADA compliance. So the building I lived in before over there, it had an elevator and it was technically wheelchair accessible through the front. There was a several month long period where they were supposed to be fixing the elevator, but that meant that it couldn't be used. And I knew that there were at least three people in wheelchairs in that building. And I was like, so you're essentially leaving them stranded in their apartments. Like how are they supposed to leave the building? 

And it's just like I get that the majority of the population is able-bodied or whatever, but like just keeping that in consideration in terms of like not just like infrastructure but also like the actual physical structures of buildings, you know, like I feel like I get that there are a lot of buildings that are old or whatever, but like the buildings that you can like put in some kind of wheelchair access, like make it more accessible. Because like even if no one with a wheelchair lives in the building, like just having it be more accessible generally makes it more accessible to even more varied body types of able-bodied people. 

Who is part of your community?

First and foremost? I'm here for black women and black woman aligned peoples, especially queer black and trans black folks. Those are my people. But more generally speaking, like all black people. And then even further to that, like African immigrants. And that those are just the spaces in which I feel more comfortable, more seen and heard and valued. But I do also agree that, like, to sort of the unspoken want for diversity because I feel like this has gotten lost in the weeds behind so much of the lip service about diversity and inclusion. What is, what is the word that just left my brain equity or something? It's not something related to that, but like DEI, movements, groups, or whatever in a different setting where they're just trying to meet a quota. 

I think that diversity has its value and its place in bringing together all of these sort of disparate lived experiences and views of the world that like more so an exchange of knowledge and ideas, I think is the use of diversity. You know, because if you stay sort of homogenous, you know, you only are in your community only maybe even just in a subset of a larger community that's based on like race or sexuality or gender or whatever. It's. You don't ever want to just be in like a social group that's just like “Everyone thinks the same thing.”  You're not really doing much there.

There's definitely value in people being able to see the same thing from all of these different perspectives and having a conversation, a dialogue about that, and then being able to come up with multiple different plans of attack and multiple different solutions for these social problems because you're approaching it from so many different perspectives. I think diversity definitely has its value there. But I. So, like, for the most part, when it comes to me and how I build community, it mostly starts from, like, a common interest or a shared perspective or something. And so, you know, it's like, there's Blackness. Because races, especially in the US when it comes to just the pure dichotomy of, like, black versus white, it's very much a visual thing. Like, when you're black, you can't really, like, hide that. 

I mean, some people do and try in terms of like, skin bleaching, plastic surgery and stuff like that, but it's like your Blackness is visible. Your whiteness is visible, Your Asianness, your Latinoness, your Africanness. In terms of African immigrants, it's visible. It's one of the first things that someone sees about you. And then it's, you know, what do you look like physically? And then the assumptions they make about, like, your gender and sexuality based on that. And then, you know, the way that clothes and fashion, the way that they do identity work, you know, so it's like every sort of aspect of yours. Of who you are, visually speaking, can tell, you know, just strangers on the street can, in passing, just tell so much information. 

Which is why, you know, going back to some of your earlier questions, which is why, you know, it's like, I came to this realization in my early 20s where I was like, yeah, no, there's so much happening visually, I can't really stop people from perceiving me and making judgments based on that perception, you know, because I might think I'm performing X, but I don't know if that's getting across to them, especially if we're not part of the same sort of communities or social groups where it's like, so to a black person, if I'm wearing this, that, and this, it means this. But like, to a white person, they might read it differently, that kind of thing, you know. 

What else should we know about how you feel about cities?

I think part of living in a city is having that MYOB, that “mind your own business.” But I feel like also in terms of safety, like, you know how on college campuses they have those police, the university police, like, call pole button things. You know, they were all over the place. Yeah, I feel like that's something we could integrate more broadly into, just like cities. Well, so here's the thing, and I think this is definitely part of the black experience. I am not necessarily in the habit of calling the police. Like, that's not really something I do. Right. And so it's like the one time I did was when the dude below me came up and threatened to shoot me and my dogs. I called the cops because I was like, who the fuck else am I supposed to. 

[Why are you] trying to go into a shootout with your neighbor? Yeah, no, I don't have a gun. I personally don't really. I mean, like, I have an assortment of blades, but I don't have a gun. 

An assortment of blades?

It's not just, it's not just knives though. So I don't want to be like, oh, I have knives. No, I have an assortment of blades. Just got a new machete, you know. But like, in terms of like safety in the city, being sort of woman perceived…I've carried a knife with me when I leave the house since high school. I want to say, if not earlier than that, but it was like a little dinky pocket knife, like one of those Swiss army knives, you know, where the blade's like this big, that's not doing anything. But I've been carrying at least a 3 or 4 if not longer blade, 4-inch blade with me on my person when I leave my apartment since I was like 17 or 18, you know, and I haven't had to use it. 

And also, apparently, I have a pretty intimidating resting bitch face. But like, I think it, I think it's sad and kind of fucked up that women and women-bodied people have to be so much more cognizant of individual personal harm. Where it's like, okay, where am I going? How well lit is it going to be depending on the time of the year, how crowded is it going to be? You know, like, will I be able to defend myself? Will I be like in a high traffic area where if something happened I could find help? Like, those are all considerations that you have to. Those are all things you have to take into consideration. And it's tweaked slightly since I've gotten dogs. So I got Ein as an ESA right before I started my master's downstate in Carbondale.

And while he is very sweet and he likes people, most people who don't know him are a little. Because he's a pretty big dog. He's pretty big and he's broad chested. And a lot of people tell me he looks like a hyena or like one of those African wild dogs.

Yeah. And this one looks like a fucking dingo. The Carolina dog that is actually their nickname is the American dingo because they really do just look like [them].

So having two big dogs has changed the way I approach personal safety. If I'm walking them out at night, especially because Roo, of the two of them, he's the one with the higher prey drive and he's more suspicious of strangers at night. So I feel less danger if I'm walking them. But like, if I'm just going out by myself to go somewhere, you know, there are like all these things I have to take into consideration and sort of be like, it's a sort of hyper-vigilance where you're sort of constantly, not necessarily like living in fear of being assaulted, but just sort of constantly aware that it is in fact a possibility based on something you have no control over. It was, I want to say Wanda Sykes in one of her standup routines was talking about how she wished she could just like, just leave her vagina at home. 

And so she plays out the situation where like, someone comes to, like, assault her or whatever, and she's just like, “I don't have it on me,” you know, and like, you laugh, but it's one of those laughing because otherwise you would scream until you lost your voice kind of things. 

Yeah, it's horrible. It's something I have heard in other interviews, the safety. It's something I know about, of course, but it's not something I always knew about. 

Yeah. And so. And so in terms of talking about what the city can do to make things safer, it's something I think about because I'm like, yeah, I believe in defunding the police, but then it's like the people that would then take the place in sort of the rigmarole of emergency services responding, you know, if we had something like the call boxes that are all over university campuses, something like that, where, like, you know, if you need help, you know, there's a place you can go to talk to someone. And I don't know who they would send. But, like, I feel like there are ways that places can be made safer even with something just as small as, like, making sure there's better, more sufficient lighting. Yeah, that's, you know, better lighting, you know, making sure. 

And this also goes back to the things like physical disabilities, you know, making sure things are wheelchair accessible. So that means making sure that the sidewalks aren't completely fucked up. You know, because there's a difference between a sidewalk where there's a little crack and a sidewalk where a tree root has lifted the concrete. You know, you can't expect someone who's bound to a wheelchair to navigate that. Not in my cohort, in the cohort that's a year below me, there's a PhD student named Adrian. They use a wheelchair. And it sort of brought my attention more to how inaccessible some things are. 

The way that Northwestern is set up, and I don't know when they started doing this, so a lot of the departments, instead of having office buildings on campus, they bought a ton of the old houses along Sheridan. And so the departments have houses. And so, you know, there's like the math house and the linguistics house. The linguistics house is where all of our faculty and staff are located. Where the students and the grad student mailboxes are located, the faculty mailboxes are located. All of that. It is completely wheelchair inaccessible. Just completely and entirely. That's where all of their offices are. That's where they hold office hours. Completely wheelchair inaccessible. Because it's an old three story house with like a big wooden porch and steep stairs and all of the hallways are like super narrow and twisty. Completely wheelchair inaccessible. 

I guess because all of the houses are so old, a lot of the departments are going to be moving onto campus in new office buildings. But like they've been doing in the process of doing that for years now. And by the time they actually are actually transferred over there, I'm pretty sure Adrian won't be a student anymore. And you know, so then once they're not a student, I feel like the department's going to go back to not caring about things like ADA accessibility because they don't need to, because they don't have a student who requires it. And it's like that should be in the foundation. 

[The building is] just not built for that. And so I think, cause I feel like the thing about a city is it's so big, and so it's kind of hard to think big picture about all of the things that can be done. But I think if you start with the individual and sort of work your way out, but just like foundationally, I feel like there's a lot that could be done in terms of urban design that would make things sort of like, by default, bare minimum, this is ADA accessible. This is ADA-compliant. You know, like, especially when it comes to crosswalks and bus stops. 

That's part of the reason why I'm interested in talking to you and other people who don't have the same body type or experience as me because I learned, reading the book Design Justice by Sasha Costanza Cook, that this was horrifying to learn that in cars the airbags are not made for women or people that have a woman's body. So women are more likely to die, get seriously injured, or be hurt when an airbag is deployed in a car accident because they are designed for the average-sized white male. And like it wasn't thought about. 

Well, and that, that's across like so many different fields too, because, you know, now we have more recent studies in neurodivergence where it's like. Yeah, no, the sort of idea that the public consciousness has about, say, autism is specifically because of all of the autistic, the little white autistic boys that they tested who all liked trains and shit. But it presents very differently in girls, and it presents differently across racial boundaries, too. The exact same thing. There was a catchy meme song on Instagram. Basically, the chorus is that we don't know about the female body because so many medical studies have only looked at white men.

And you're like, it's 2024. What do you mean? And it's just, it's. That's so there's like this sort of. I don't even know how to explain it. So, like with social media and then specifically TikTok, there's like this push for like anti-intellectualism, but it has sort of like a broader connection to sort of like the idea of science as this infallible, objectively correct thing when that's not what science is. That's not what science is. Science is conclusions drawn by humans who are fallible by nature. And trying to take science, especially when it comes to, like, medical stuff, trying to take it as, like, an objective, true fact that's universally applicable is completely erroneous to do, because not only are researchers fallible, they have biases, but then also, like, we're coming to find out about so many things.  

They only ever really looked at people who looked like them. Yeah, that's where all of those findings and conclusions are drawn from, which is why you have so many medical misdiagnoses for people who aren't white men. So you have it across racial lines where it's like black patients, but then also across gender lines where it's like, specifically the sort of. And it always kind of falls to the black woman, where, like, the most underrepresented type of person studied medically in a way that was meant to help people as opposed to, like, the Venus Hottentot kind of stuff. 

So it's just like, there are so many, like, unspoken fallacies about the world that most people are not going to think to interrogate because they're comfortable with the knowledge that they learned in high school, and that fits their worldview, and they don't have any reason to challenge it. When people challenge it, they get defensive and push back. And then, you know, you have people having these fights on the internet [about it].

So, like, I know that there have been more and more conversations about sex, like biological sex on the internet, where actual biologists are coming out and being like, okay, first of all, the whole thing you learned in high school about, like, XX and XY chromosomes is a vast oversimplification of how chromosomes present in humans. And most people don't go get their chromosomes tested. So there are plenty of people out there who have chromosomes that are probably not what they think their chromosomes are based on their, like, high school understanding of biological men have XY and biological women have XX. And that's all that there is, and that's all that exists. And actual legitimate biologists are out here being like, no, it's actually more of, like, a broad chromosomal spectrum that can have all of these different ways of displaying and manifesting itself. 

And we see this in nature, in animals, and humans are mammals and animals. So it is also like this in humans and, like, especially people who the basis of their, like, socioeconomic power is built off of inequalities that use these very basic understandings of things like biological sex and biological race. They. They hate that. They push back against that. They're like, no, no. Everyone's trying to be too woke these days and blah, blah, blah. And it's just. It's all just one big clusterfuck.

I feel like. I feel like I'm starting to talk in circles because, like, it's all connected, but it's all just one huge clusterfuck where it's like there are people who are in power and know they're in power and know that their power is built off of disenfranchising other people, but they don't care. They just want to stay in power. So they're fighting against any sort of pushback or even correction or nuance in terms of these things. Because once you start having nuance, once it's not rigid binary thinking, well, then next thing you know, you'll be suggesting socialism because capitalism thrives on binaries. You're rich or you're poor. You know, you're good or you're bad. You know, you're the person on top, or you're the person on the bottom. Yeah, sorry I made this super depressing.