CRT & the Everyday Politics of Belonging
This isn’t just my neighborhood—it’s a microcosm of America’s racial debate.
Labor Pains Project is an ongoing archive of testimony, research, and reflection on the lived realities of Black communities navigating systemic erasure, resistance, and healing. Each entry is both personal and collective—a record of how history presses against the present, and how voices refuse to be silenced. This reflection continues that work, documenting my recent encounters with NextDoor as a microcosm of Albany’s racial politics and the broader American refusal to reckon with slavery’s legacy.
📰 The Social Experiment of NextDoor
This season, my experiences on NextDoor have turned into their own mini social experiment. It started on November 5th. Both Albany and Oakland had just elected their first Black female mayors—Applyrs in Albany and Lee in Oakland, who stepped in after corruption charges followed the previous mayor. That same week, NYC elected its first Muslim mayor, and I couldn’t have been prouder to be a New Yorker. Across the country, there seemed to be an understanding that this current system is failing.
I posted that opinion on NextDoor. The white rage was palpable.
The responses ranged from completely dismissing the political gains to the very disturbing “9-11 Never Forget” in response to Mamdani’s ascent.
Later that week, I posted a vulnerable blog about disciplining my son and the difficulty of doing so in any American school system. The response? One woman accused me of making “broad sweeping statements” about white teachers and suggested my son change his attire to not be viewed as a criminal. I didn’t have the patience to tell her he attends a school where he wears a uniform. She was quick to tell me her “immigrant Black husband” doesn’t experience the same thing. I had no energy to explain all the things wrong with that comparison.
The app’s “hall monitors”—usually retired, middle-aged white residents—have made it their mission to flag my posts. My content is removed for reasons ranging from “Spam” to “National Issues.” The truth is, a contingent of white residents in the Capital District has built its identity on a regional myth: that Albany and the Capital District are always on the right side of history, that they solved the race problem with the formal abolition of slavery in 1827, and that the region is inherently industrious, prosperous, and modern. They actively police my content, accusing me of “race baiting” whenever I name white fragility or white rage. My account is now on a “read-only” status—an act meant to create space for their fragility and silence my presentation of historical fact. This is the NextDoor app in Albany, where I am supposed to believe we have moved beyond racism.
🧠 The Theory is Already Here
At first, it upset me. Then I remembered: I am a social researcher. Their rage is data.
What is happening to me on NextDoor is racism and the legacy of slavery in practice. The audacity of white rage is why understanding Critical Race Theory (CRT) is so important.
The Black community has been gaslit by white nationalism since 1619. CRT is simply the lens that makes sense of this. In accessible terms, it posits that:
- Racism is not aberrational but a permanent and ordinary feature of American society.
- Law and policy embed racial hierarchies, protecting a system of white supremacy.
- Counter-storytelling—listening to the lived experiences of marginalized people—is necessary to challenge the dominant, “colorblind” narratives.
I am actively challenging the embedded racial bias in one of the earliest settlements in the New World. The descendants of the “my family never owned slaves” clans are deeply upset by my counter-storytelling. It cracks their racist foundations and the capitalist aspirations that racial exploitation promised.
The debates raging over CRT in schools, workplaces, and DEI programs are the exact same arguments I see on my neighborhood app. Critics frame it as divisive, “reverse discrimination,” or “too academic.” Yet its insights are lived daily.
They are right to be scared of it. Legislative bans try to restrict discussing race in classrooms, framing basic history as “indoctrination.” Corporations, after investing in DEI, are now running scared from political backlash, reframing equity as simple “compliance.” The same people who tell me “we don’t see race” on NextDoor are the ones terrified that their children might learn that colorblindness is not neutrality—it’s erasure.
🗣️ My Narrative as a Counter-Story
This reaction is not random—it is distinctly Albany. On my Oakland, CA, NextDoor account, the reception is overwhelmingly positive. Black and white, male and female, people engage with curiosity and openness. In Albany, NY, the opposite: white, conservative, poor and middle-class, Trump-supporting Albany lashes out.
This is the problem with race in Albany: white conservative Albany wants to pretend race is not an issue. The legal and political machines of the region have perfected the art of obfuscation, ensuring African Americans remain second-class citizens.
The United States Constitution took effect in 1789. One year later, according to the Northeast Slavery Records Index, Albany County experienced its peak enslaved population, recording 3,722 souls. This surge occurred in the immediate aftermath of a war fought by American colonists under the banner of individual liberty and the rule of law. While traditional historiography often frames this coexistence of chattel slavery and revolutionary ideals as a “paradox,” it is perhaps more accurately described as fundamental hypocrisy.
There is a distinct geographical continuity to this history. In mapping contemporary resistance to my work in Albany, I have found that the strongest opposition originates from the very municipalities that held the densest enslaved populations in 1790:
- Rensselaerswyck: 550 enslaved persons
- Watervliet: 484 enslaved persons
- Albany: 414 enslaved persons
- Coxsackie: 176 enslaved persons
- Catskill: 171 enslaved persons
This continuity exemplifies the permanence of racism described in Critical Race Theory—a structural reality rather than a fleeting anomaly. It is worth noting that even Alexander Hamilton purchased two enslaved people in New York in 1769, illustrating how deeply embedded this economy was in the state’s foundation.
This history is fading from public consciousness, allowing stereotypes and misinformation to fill the gaps in white historical memory and inform responses to the Black community. My archival research reveals a troubling result: the Black community in Albany remains decentralized, with pockets of activity often competing for limited time, attention, and funds. These movements are not failing naturally; they are operating within legal and social frameworks historically designed to protect white property rights over Black liberation—the enduring legacy of slavery in the Capital Region.
Historical fact challenges misinformed assumptions still prevalent in the region:
- That there is no organization in the Black community.
- That Black people are “lazy” and in need of state intervention.
- That the slums exist because of Black failure, not systemic design
And this is my counter-story. I saw this clearly when I worked with the orchestra on a project meant to build bridges. The organization and its board revealed their fragile rage and unwillingness to question their worldview.
My work with the Labor Pains Project is the antidote. It is the counter-story. It centers the testimony of Black women to document 250 years of economic exclusion and resilience. This blog, this research, this fight on NextDoor—it is all part of the same ledger, where theory meets our lived economic and social reality.
📢 Saying It Loudly, Proudly
America has never adequately confronted race and the legacy of slavery in its legal and political systems. We keep drinking water with feces in it, expecting it to get better over time with sweetener. We need to filter out the feces.
💬 Join the Conversation
Labor Pains is not just my archive — it is a collective testimony. If you are a Black woman interested in sharing your labor stories, I invite you to join our upcoming Zoom gatherings:
- November 22 at 3:00 PM (EST)
- November 29 at 4:00 PM (EST)
These sessions are spaces of healing, truth-telling, and community building. Because our stories matter. Because saying the quiet parts aloud is how we begin to transform silence into power.
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