The late Neely Fuller once said “Black people are always on the move.” The anti-racist educator talked about American Descendants of Slavery having to constantly pick up and move, find a place, plant roots, and do it all over again. I have seen this within my own family and community; the times we were displaced, relocating from one neighborhood to another due to rising costs of rent, property taxes, and racism. To understand the plight of Black families, Latino communities, Asian ethnicities, and Indigenous people is to know stability is not promised.
The concept of home for me is comfort. It is to know that you can return to place that knows you, welcomes you, and keeps you safe. It is the smells of your family’s meals cooking, the music that is played in your neighbors house, the greetings as you walk down the block – “Hey what’s up LeRon! Que Pasa homie! Oye Hector (if you know you know)!” and the familiarity that makes you smile. Home is about love. It is the place that hopefully you can be who you are, and exhale. However, racism has always made that a difficult goal.
In 2025, we are witnessing a nearly three-year genocide in Gaza, that is a continuation of a 75-year land grab. A total eradication of a people and their community. In the United States, The Trump administration has enacted a sweeping immigration mandate on undocumented people; causing men, women, and children to be kidnapped, detained, and trafficked throughout the world by masked men and women. Black American dominated cities such as Oakland, Atlanta, and Philadelphia are becoming less Black due to rising costs and gentrification. The concept of home is changing for many of us.
Years ago, I found out my family’s history of migration in America. We were bought by enslavers and transported to states such as Virginia and Oklahoma, only to migrate again to Missouri and Kansas due to the Great Migration. We have always been a people that have moved around and attempted to plant some kind of roots wherever we go. I have lived in many homes and apartments growing up. This was due to landlord’s selling properties, rents increasing, and the inability to buy real estate. Growing up, I did not think there was anything wrong with the way we lived. Many friends and family experienced the same circumstances. Later in life, I learned many of these obstacles we faced in finding stable housing were due to the barriers institutional racism created such as neighborhood covenants and redlining. Reading Richard Rothstein’s “The Color of Law”, I began to understand why my family and others were funneled into all Black neighborhoods that lacked resources and opportunity. This creates instability and unrest, which denies one the ability to be settled and create a home.
When I look at my family’s history of movement and building a home, I contrast it with the events of today – the destruction of Palestine, the ICE raids on various Latino, African, and Caribbean communities, and the reverse white flight that is ripping the fabric of Black American neighborhoods. All of this is violent displacement – removing people from environments of familiarity, eradicating of culture, removing of roots, and the attempt to erase the history of those who lived on these streets, in these towns and cities. This causes us to always be in motion, fatigued, and susceptible to racism/white supremacy.
Recently I had a chat with a new colleague about race and family. She began to mention her family’s roots in Colorado and the danger of ICE. “My family didn’t cross the border, they were here before the United States,” she told me. We then began to discuss our people always having to be on the move and having to relocate. How building a home and community is difficult today. My colleague, who is a bit of a vagabond, offered a new way of viewing things “Maybe home is not material anymore. Maybe home is what we carry in our hearts, our minds. What we remember.” I thought about that and smiled. “Yeah, maybe home is us and wherever we go.”