BIPOC Solidarities, Decolonization, and Otherwise Kinship through Black Feminist Love

Abstract:Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) solidarities in colonially called North America are frequently theorized within the ongoing histories of white heteropatriarchal supremacy and colonial ideologies and structures. Within these discourses, whiteness continues to be centered while the voices, theorizations, lived experiences, and contributions of Black peoples are overlooked, a perpetuation of the anti-Blackness embedded within colonization. The centering of whiteness also subsumes differences across BIPOC communities and frames kinship relations as emerging solely from the shared goal of dismantling systemic violences experienced across BIPOC communities. But, Black feminist theorizations of love recognize that differences and incommensurabilities are integral to positive and meaningful BIPOC solidarities. Thus, decolonization and BIPOC solidarities must center Black feminist theorizations of love as integral to building decolonial otherwises of freedom.