Belonging as an Act of Justice
Examining Hostile Architecture, Race, and Homelessness through the Lens of MLK’s Beloved Community
I was 17 years old when I first learned about racialized hostile architecture.1 The brake booster had just gone out on my 1981 Baby Blue Box Chevy, so my mother encouraged me to call my grandfather Carlton York, a mechanic, to see if he could fix the problem.
He invited me over and taught me two lessons I’ll never forget. The first was that he wouldn’t fix the car for me. He told me to grab a tool from the toolbox, and he’d fix it with me. I remember walking over to a rusty toolbox and grabbing the wrench among tools that looked like they had traveled through a few generations.
Not knowing if I grabbed the right tool, he said, “searching was a sign of learning…”
The second lesson came when I told him I didn’t think I’d be able to fix the car because I didn’t understand the tools. That was his opportunity to teach me a history lesson: my grandfather had a way of turning a car into a classroom.
He told me how he’d grown up in the Jim Crow South and how every single day, he fought complex laws and buildings designed to remind black people, “You don’t belong…”
Granddaddy wasn’t telling me this because he didn’t think I could fix my car with his help. He was teaching me everything he had to overcome so that I could fix it. He was reminding me of a hostile world out there that did everything it could to remind him and my family and those stained with the pain of racial hatred that we weren’t worthy and just didn’t fit in.
He said the type of hostile architecture he faced was when water fountains reminded us that we weren’t welcome. Signs on buses or restaurant windows reminded us that we had to wait or enter from the back and that we were not welcome somehow.
He told me that public sanitation2 had always been at the core of what it meant to be excluded and to keep people that looked like him and me from thinking that belonging, achieving, or pursuing anything beyond our sphere was possible. This hostile architecture was a violent racial reminder that home for some did not mean home for others.
Not only was I blown away by his description of his experiences but the fact that he talked about how these were actual laws influenced by segregation that showed up violently in voter restriction laws, employment discrimination, redlining, and even convict leasing.
This was the first time I’d ever heard about what that lack of belonging in society looked and felt like. He was the history book I didn’t get a chance to explore in my K-12 experience.
But sitting in that 1981 Chevy, my grandfather told me I belonged to a larger community: a Beloved Community.
He taught me that belonging is about value, and value had everything to do with the inherent worth and value I possessed—that we possess, especially since God gave us that worth.
He reminded me that on April 15, 1960, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech in Raleigh, N.C., and spoke these words as found in the King Papers at Stanford (2021):
“It must be made palpably clear that resistance and nonviolence are not in themselves good. There is another element that must be present in our struggle that then makes our resistance and nonviolence truly meaningful. That element is reconciliation. Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community” (para. 2).3
He taught me I belonged to a community more significant than the one defined by hatred: the Beloved Community. I learned that King’s idea of the Beloved Community included two of many important aspects:
The Beloved Community is a society where all members are valued and included: King's concept of the Beloved Community is rooted in the idea that every individual has inherent worth and value, regardless of their background or circumstances.
Belonging is essential for creating and sustaining the Beloved Community: To create a society where all members are valued and included, it is necessary to foster a sense of belonging among all individuals.
King’s work around advocating for a Beloved Community had to do with centering the voices of those oppressed and working to build a sense of safety, stability, home, and Community for the Beloved Community to flourish.
My conversation with my granddad became the impetus for how I ended up in a Ph.D. program studying public policy and researching how public policy has been used for centuries to define the worth of poor and unhoused in this country—but specifically, those who are unhoused.
Before I finished my doctoral work, I spent years researching the five periods of Homelessness in the U.S., how social and political rhetoric has moved homelessness from a social issue to a criminal one, and why there has been an attack on the poor through verbal and physical abuse and social mistreatment.
That research has led me on a personal journey of understanding the connections between race and class and how public sanitation has always been at the core of violent laws that have threatened Black and Brown people and has continued to morph into laws that attack those who are poor and unhoused.
I learned that public policy that targets poor people is grounded in a racial history because of the historical and ongoing systemic racism in the United States. This includes policies and practices during the Jim Crow era, such as redlining and employment discrimination, which limited the economic opportunities available to black individuals and communities.
These policies and practices have led to a legacy of poverty and inequality that affects black communities today. As a result of this systemic racism, homelessness disproportionately affects black and brown communities. According to a report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, black people make up 13% of the U.S. population but represent over 40% of the homeless population. Latinx individuals also experience higher rates of homelessness than their white counterparts.4
I have also noticed that laws that attack one's ability to belong in a community and the "world house," as King talked about, make it harder for a group to belong in a larger society.
Public sanitation, whether in the past when my grandfather faced racial hostile architecture or in current times, is used to exclude vulnerable groups from being seen and valued. It was a threat then and continues to be a threat to one's ability to belong.
Being seen and heard is a powerful reminder that we exist and are human, regardless of whether a person is unhoused or their skin has been kissed by nature’s sun. Hostile architecture, both in the past and present, has always been about public sanitation and has never been about acknowledging the worth and visibility of people who are unwanted.
Spikes, fences, boulders, and signs littered across cities remind those poor and unhoused that they do not belong—especially if they have no address. And, to my grandfather’s point, this was violent to him then, and watching a blatant attack on people experiencing poverty and homelessness is violent now.
This dehumanization further perpetuates the cycle of poverty, homelessness, and criminalization, making it even harder for individuals to find stability and the support they need to rebuild their lives. Over decades, public policy has determined who is worthy, unworthy, deserving, and undeserving regarding homelessness and poverty (Herring, 2020).5
And because every policy has a narrative, whether we believe it or not, it can keep those who have experienced discrimination and are vulnerable from being entirely accepted as part of a Beloved Community.
Belonging is essential because it is a fundamental aspect of being human. It allows individuals to feel a sense of connection and community, find liberation from oppression, and potentially rebuild their lives after experiencing homelessness or displacement.
Belonging may seem like a small thing, but it is not:
Belonging is an act of justice because it acknowledges every individual's inherent worth and dignity, including the unhoused.
Belonging is an act of justice because it recognizes the systemic barriers and injustices that have led to poverty and homelessness and seeks to address them.
Belonging is an act of justice because it promotes social inclusion and helps to combat the stigma and discrimination faced by the unhoused and poor.
Belonging is an act of justice because it provides a sense of safety, stability, and community, which is essential for human well-being and flourishing.
Belonging is an act of justice because it centers the voices of those who have been oppressed.
Belonging is an act of justice because belonging is justice in a world full of hostile architecture.
Radicalized hostile architecture refers to architectural designs that are intentionally created to exclude or harm specific marginalized or minority groups, often based on race, ethnicity, or religion. This can include fences, walls, barriers intended to separate or confine certain groups, or designs that make it difficult for people with disabilities to access public spaces.
Public sanitation efforts can be used to reinforce existing power structures and social hierarchies, for example, by focusing on cleaning up areas that tourists or other affluent groups frequent while neglecting areas where marginalized or minority groups live, work, or gather. This can contribute to the stigmatization and exclusion of these groups from public spaces and reinforces a system of inequality.
The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. (2021, May 24). Retrieved March 8, 2023, from https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/statement-press-beginning-youth-leadership-conference
“Homelessness and Racial Disparities.” National Alliance to End Homelessness, April 14, 2023. https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/what-causes-homelessness/inequality/.
Herring, C. (2020). Cruel Streets: Criminalizing Homelessness in San Francisco (Publication No. 28089592). [Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
I've traveled around this sun of ours for almost seven decades now, and almost every year I think that I have a good understanding of how the world works. And almost every year that confidence is blown apart by something someone says or rights that opens my eyes wider.
Thank you for your passion for justice and examining systems and behaviors in the social spheres to show us how small actions from deep within a system can have such powerful and negative impacts, from the system that built parallel systems to handle the simple aspect of providing drinking water to all people to "tidying up sidewalks" in such a way as to make them hostile to the most vulnerable and easily targeted among us as a way to push them out of sight and mind.
That a government would go out of its way at great cost to line a sidewalk with heavy, expensive boulders, rendering the sidewalk difficult to use for all as a way to keep homeless people from feeling as if there's a place for them in the city, seems an extraordinary waste of money and a corruption of the original meaning of a sidewalk--a place to walk protected and isolated from traffic--but as long as it hurts the vulnerable more, it's a worthy cost, I guess.
I'm grateful to know you through your works, and grateful that you are with us with your passions and your awareness of what's going on around us. And I'm grateful that you are trained and skilled to do this so powerfully and with the authority that comes from study, analysis, and presentation.
What an extraordinary gift you are to all of us, and what a wonderful thing you do to help us become more aware of the least among us so that as we seek to build that Beloved Community, we look to the least to bring them to the place of dignity and hope.
What a touching, wise and moving write up as always Terence. I always learn so much from you. I can't imagine what your grandfather went through. I'm so glad you had him. Thank you for teaching us.