Provocations
Looking to confront the isolation of Covid-19 and support the uprisings against white supremacy of 2020, Nicki Jizz launched Reparations: An All Black Drag Show. The online, monthly event was a showcase of queer and trans Black performers of all types and a gathering place for community from around the world. As Nicki shared, she wanted a show, “with Black girls in it, always and forever.” The show provided a source of income and an unmitigated platform for Black performers (dancers and choreographers reached federal unemployment rates of 55 percent during 2020). It also created opportunities for education, connection and celebration for the audience from the safety of their homes. Rooted in San Francisco (the livestream was hosted by the legendary cooperative gay bar The Stud), Nicki’s work shows how the creation of bold cultural spaces can expand narratives of belonging in unexpected places (San Francisco is predicted to be the "whitest county" in the Bay Area by the year 2040 and is one of the cities with the highest income inequality in the country).
Below we highlight three ways that Nicki and Reparations creates belonging, rooted in care for herself and her community.
1.
Create unmitigated cultural spaces
The second essential practice of OBI’s cultural strategy for belonging refers to the importance of amplifying and creating platforms for cultural expression on its own terms. In many ways, the practice is a push back against the expectation of translation in order to “fit in.” In a drag culture where Black performers are often tokenized or asked to play the one Black role, Reparations created a space that cultivated a thriving complication of identity, as shown by the many different styles and forms of performance it presented. The show celebrates who we are and who we can be when we don’t have to “fit.” It pushes back against essentialism and a flattening of identity, instead allowing our full selves to thrive. Spaces like this not only support the individuals performing or creating, they expand the broader circle of what and who belongs by celebrating complexity and diversity of being.
2.
Create alternative spaces for connection in a context of othering
In our conversation, Nicki spoke to the way that Reparations, and more broadly online drag during the pandemic, supported the maintenance of relationships and community. Nicki spoke to the idea of chosen family in the queer community as a reflection of the need to create family in the context of homophobia and transphobia. She also spoke to the presence of anti-Black racism in queer communities. As revealed in the show’s title, Nicki intentionally created a space that was welcoming to queer and Black people. By clearly setting the boundaries of the communal space, Nicki was facilitating multiple levels of connection; from people who just wanted a space to be, to people who engaged in informal microconnections through the chat, to people who came to claim the space as their own.
3.
Accessibility is for everyone
During the panel "Care for the Future" at the 2020 Allied Media Conference, disability justice and care visionary, Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha reflected on one intersection of queerness, aging and disability, “People are like, where are the queer elders? Where are they? And I’m like, they’re disabled. They stopped being able to go to the club because the club doesn’t have a place to sit down.” Centering accessibility was a key takeaway for Nicki during Reparations. As the shows continued, she began to realize that the online show spread accessibility while keeping people safe. This included accessibility in the form of physical access at bars and clubs, the cost of attending, and risk exposure due to Covid-19 for immuno-compromised people. In thinking about accessibility, Nicki reflected on how this benefited her as well, particularly through new connections and relationships that were made in the online space. While it has been written about before, Nicki’s reflections are yet another example of how thinking deeply about accessibility can benefit everyone through a centering of care for each other.
