Revisiting “The Civic Inferiority Complex”
The Black Urbanist Weekly for February 21-27, 2022
This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights I, Kristen Jeffers’s, Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week I'm dipping into my vault of prior posts and newsletters to celebrate Black History Month. This week and next, I’m revisiting the Civic Inferiority Complex. I’m also thankful for sponsorship for this newsletter from my Patreon supporters. You can also advertise your Black and/or queer-led business, your upcoming urbanist conference, your next job/RFP announcement, or anything nice that we agree on together that’s less than 350 words. Rates start at $75/week for a four-week commitment and there are special packages for those aforementioned Black and/or queer-led businesses. Learn more.
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I’ve always envisioned the civic inferiority complex as a physical place/space version of both the (human) inferiority complexes and imposter syndrome. And like those other issues, it has its roots in imperialism and must be dismantled along with every other piece of imperialism, if we expect the Earth to survive as a thriving ecosystem.
I first put the words to the screen almost ten years to this date on January 23, 2012, in a post called Five Ways to Kill the Civic Inferiority Complex in City Building.
This post was rooted in the first battle, yes battle, to get Greensboro a Trader Joe’s. It finally opened, in a different location than the one hotly contested, which is still vacant and should honestly become the second set of apartments/condos at Friendly Center, the “highest-end” shopping area in the Piedmont region currently. But I digress. (And if you want to digress more, my 2014 Next City article calling out Trader Joe’s for not having the lens it does now with both site selection and diversity, equity, and inclusion).
Then I came back to write about this concept again, as I realized that the Tiebout model is the “American Dream”, in a post called: Voting With Your Feet: The Cure for the Civic Inferiority Complex?, on July 8, 2013.
When I originally wrote these posts, and honestly, much of this site, my own knowledge of systemic racism (and all of its cousins that come up from years of imperialism and colonialism on this planet), was not as sharp.
Not for lack of trying. This platform has been the table where I’ve sat for just over a decade asking the questions and making real-world observations. First, it was things like, Why isn’t my neighborhood good enough to keep a high-end grocery store? After all, one just left and the people in my community didn’t change that much, besides retirement, state violence, and layoffs from factories moving overseas. Are we really going to make access to healthy and fresh food a luxury?
Yes, we will. This is what I learned over time and the Tiebout model was the explanation. Why pay for someone else’s problems, when I can go somewhere better? Why deal with my own problems, my interior inferiority complexes, my imposter syndrome, and that of my city that insists that we are worthless because we don’t have X, W, and Z?
But that doesn’t work for everyone. What happens when you run out of Earth? And yes, space, but until we humans find the other beings on the planet that looks like ours (or attempt to colonize some other planet for better or worse), this is our Earth, our planet and we can’t outrun our issues. We all eventually die and we don’t take our pools of coins with us.
However, in a body marginalized by the current system from a place likewise marginalized, yet, with enough privilege to try and solve this equation, I was gon try.
In 2012, trying looked like these five steps:
-Identify your setting (the physical, cultural, and emotional space of our cities, that other people compare and judge. It’s what already exists, but we see as being mundane or even demeaning) and your unknown lights ( can also be mundane for some, but they are more positive activities. They are also activities that would be celebrated if they were in a different form or from a different place.)
-Take one part of the setting, gather a group, and work on fixing it
-Take one unknown light and work on making it known
-Stop over-comparing your community to the point of disrepair and accidental destruction
-Be creative and repeat the other steps often to fix problems and encourage your community.
Yes, this is still relevant, but what I firmly believe now is that depending on what your lived experience is, you need some other tools.
This is the point where I marry my first big theory on this platform (the civic inferiority complex) and Black Queer Feminist urbanism.
Obviously, since I just talked about needing different tools, I’m queuing up Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. It’s got some age on it, but this was the tenor and the terminology of the conversation when she had it and much like when I looked up my writings from a decade ago and saw the lights coming on, this made me realize that I wasn’t alone writing and expressing these concerns, something I firmly believed in 2012.
I also want to leave us this week with Dr. Callie Womble Edwards, who in her 2019 scholarly paper Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Stereotype Threat: Reconceptualizing the Definition of a Scholar, does what I do here, drops the theories, and tells her own personal story of overcoming imposter syndrome, another cousin of the civic inferiority complex and of course the human one.
Like Dr. Edwards, I also decided to do something else Audre Lorde said decided to define myself, for myself.
I did it imperfectly, without knowledge that so many of my Black femme elders and peers had done the same, back in that first 2012 post where I created my own definition of the civic inferiority complex.
Now, I do it knowing that I’m in community with people; past, present, and future.
Next week, we’re coming back to my recent summit talk -- Defining Myself For Myself: Creating My Black Queer Feminist Urbanism as we close out this Black History Month (US and Canada) reflections on my work.
Before You Go
Thank y’all for your patience with the email sends last week. I draft these now in Google Drive and it’s easier to copy and paste into Substack and to include the photos and audio I want, versus Mailchimp that makes you copy paragraph by paragraph. I did like that I could send you all this survey, but even that was a bit bumpy of a process to create.
I have so much more I want to say and I don’t want to get stuck with what email service to use. One thing I do want to clarify is that there will always be a free edition of this newsletter, even on Substack. However, that will come with ads. But, you can tell me in the survey what kind of ads you want to receive and a little more about who you are in a way that I can better write this newsletter for you.
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Finally, especially, if we share identity intersections, and you’re out here on the job hunt, thinking about starting a business, or need a strategic plan for just getting through on this planet, hit me up. I offer this service on a sliding scale, starting at $75 per 1.5-hour session for students/recent grads and anyone else who needs a break in their budget and $250 per 1.5-hour session for those of you doing alright financially, but you need or want to switch things up. The word on the street is true about helping nudge some folks into some life-changing opportunities, I would love for that to be you too. Send me a direct email with the subject Strategy Session.
Until next time,
Kristen