What does it mean to be Black and thrive?
That’s the question Lauren Hood had in mind when she founded the Institute for AfroUrbanism, a space to explore what Black people can glean from past generations to help build the lives and communities they want today.
Since 2021, the Detroiter and community developer has talked with dozens of residents for her work on a “Black Thriving Index” (BTI), which looks at how dozens of Black people in Detroit and as far away as Chicago, New York, Atlanta and even Berlin, Germany, have manifested success for themselves and others.
She hopes this research – set to be published early next year – can help other Black people live long and happy lives despite the hurdles they may face.
“I feel like so much of the dominant narratives about Black folks are synonymous with struggle. Struggle is a thing we can experience, but it doesn’t have to be our identity,” Hood told BridgeDetroit outside the former Metropolitan Community Tabernacle church on Cameron Street, which will soon house her institute.
In October, Hood’s institute is starting a year-long pilot fellowship for Black cultural developers to explore the BTI and what can be done to help more Black Detroiters thrive. Hood said fellows have already been selected and they are “names you will recognize” in the city.
BridgeDetroit’s Bryce Huffman sat down with Hood, an urban planner, U-M assistant professor and former member of Detroit’s Reparations Task Force, among other roles, to discuss the institute, what it means to be Black and thriving, and laying down roots in Detroit’s historic North End neighborhood.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
BridgeDetroit: What is the Institute for AfroUrbanism and what inspired it?
Hood: It was a response to something that I saw as a deficiency in this community development ecosystem. I’ve held a lot of different roles from a lot of different vantage points. I’ve been able to view the dynamics of a city rapidly transforming, and it occurred to me that we might lose the thing that is most important to how we develop, like our culture, if we weren’t intentional about how we hold on to it.
So when I started the Institute for AfroUrbanism, I put the afro right in front of the urbanism so it was clear what the focus was. It’s not to say this kind of urbanism is better than any other kind of urbanism, but I centered the afro because we’re a city that’s overwhelmingly Black, and instead of transforming in a way that diminishes that, we should instead center it, promote it, elevate it.
This is me trying to model, demonstrate, pilot, how we do culture-centric community development.
BridgeDetroit: There’s the world of people who’ve been here for decades and there’s the world of people who are just discovering, or rediscovering, Detroit and the experience is completely different from what long-time Detroiters know. Why was it important for you to just name that right up front?
Hood: I’ve been on a journey in my work, and I spent a lot of time worrying about what outside forces were up to. Like what the development community was doing, what certain people in leadership were doing, and I’ve intentionally redirected my work to focus on what I could do.
I used to be calling people out for gentrification and displacement and while it’s correct – we don’t want those things – I intentionally decided to reorient my work toward what I do want to see.
The Institute for AfroUrbanism specifically focuses on what conditions need to exist in order for Black people to thrive. I no longer am worried about what other folks are doing. I get to focus 100% on what me and mine are up to.
BridgeDetroit: Why did you choose the North End to be the future home of IAU?
Hood: What I know about the history of this place is a lot of folks that were displaced from the Black Bottom neighborhood, those families moved here.
There’s a particular kind of cultural legacy that exists here. I feel like it’s okay to be Black and weird here and nobody’s going to be getting in your business. People expect some experimentation in this neighborhood. So the rich, the legacy, the room to spread out.
With this building in particular, I was driving up and down all the streets in the North End looking at properties, because I really wanted to be here. Then I stumbled across this church, and I was looking into who owned it, and it was Liz Blondie, who is a friend of mine. So I took that as a sign from the universe. But it didn’t happen overnight. It was a long, several months, maybe even a year-long process for my institute to acquire the property.
BridgeDetroit: You spent time on the Detroit Reparations Task Force and its goal is to look at historic harms done to Black Detroiters and how we can repair those things. How much of that experience do you think factored into what you’re doing at the institute?
Hood: From my experience with working on reparations, it occurred to me that calls for reparations are like Black folks waiting for something outside of us to make us whole, whether it’s the government or institutions.
I have a research study called the Black Thriving Index where I’ve been interviewing Black people who exhibit some degree of agency, abundance and audacity in the way that they live their life … to see if we can reverse engineer thriving for other Black folks.
What I’ve learned through this interview process is that all the people have drawn on resources from within. I think Black folks do need to get in the right relationship with the government and institutions. That does need to happen, but our wholeness isn’t contingent on that.
BridgeDetroit: Can you talk more about the Black Thriving Index, the interview process, and what residents can take away from it?
Hood: In 2021, I started interviewing Black folks that I deem as “thriving.”
Again, they have to be exhibiting some degree of agency, like showing control over their own outcomes. They need abundance, which doesn’t mean they’re necessarily wealthy, but they’re stable, in some cases wealthy, but have good relationships, have work that is rewarding, so an abundant mindset and lifestyle, and then, audacity. Are they showing up as their fully expressed cultural selves? Are their aspirations worthy of our ancestors’ wildest dreams?
I want to say too, I have a lot of colleagues who meet conventional success metrics, but I wouldn’t say they’re thriving, because the contortions they go through on a daily basis to maintain their position doesn’t look like thriving to me.
So, by the institute’s definition, thriving is a very specific kind of way of being.
I (originally) thought (for the index) I would just (interview) 50 people in Detroit. But I was like, ‘wait a minute, my thriving means I get to travel.’ So I’m like, ‘let me go talk to Black people thriving in other places.’ So I talked to folks in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and … Berlin. This research sends me where I want to go, because part of the experience of teaching people about thriving is I have to model it.
BridgeDetroit: There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for Detroit’s problems, particularly the problems of legacy Black Detroiters. Through your research, is there anything you found to help simplify those solutions for someone who’s just beginning to do that work?
Hood: One of my biggest key findings is that all the people that I’ve talked to about experiences they had in their formative years revolved around them having had some example of what it looks like to be Black and thrive.
So, for me, the big takeaway is you need inspiration. You need to see it before you can be it. And it’s not like a kid who sees Barack Obama on TV. It needs to be someone close enough, so that you see yourself in them.
There’s also something that I can’t quite quantify. It’s like a permission to live a good life.
I feel like so much of the dominant narratives about Black folks are synonymous with struggle. Struggle is a thing we can experience, but it doesn’t have to be our identity. I feel like for the folks I’ve been talking to, they could experience struggle, but they were like, ‘this isn’t me. It’s just the thing I’m going through and I can be more, do more, go further.’ I’m still trying to quantify what it actually looks like in practice. How do we give more of us permission to live good lives?
BridgeDetroit: You have a fellowship opportunity coming up. Can you tell us about that?
Hood: I really wanted to do a broader analysis of what Black folks in Detroit needed in order to thrive.
This colleague of mine, Alex B. Hill, put out an article about fellowships in Detroit, and how a nominal number of the fellows were Black. And I was like, ‘I want to have an all-Black fellowship one day to counter this dynamic that was going on in the city.’ Originally, I raised money from the Mellon Foundation to give seven fellows $40,000 each. So it’s not their full-time job, it’s like half-time.
I was gonna do a public call for fellows and have a rigorous selection process, but I’m kind of at capacity. So for this first pilot round, I’m going to designate the fellows, and we’re going to go through this learning journey together where we study the principles of AfroUrbanism over the course of a year. What does cultural community development look like, with a nod to the future, but also trying to understand our ancestral heritage and folkways.
Through the course of this year the fellows have to conduct 20 Black thriving interviews with their neighbors in Detroit. At the end, we’ll collectively author something with our findings.
This is the worst kept secret in the world to anyone actually looking for an answer: positive role model + agency= thriving.
Of course, to exercise agency you have to know what it is, and appreciate that it comes with responsibilities as well as rights.
Those basic facts have been kept from generations of Detroiters and Americans by the vultures of the professional grievance class, whose “work” (salaries) depends on the continued misery of the people in whose name they preach the false gospel of powerlessness.
Let me save you several more years of study and “research”, Lauren. Interview ANY African-American, as in Americans born in Africa, and see what their take on the “thriving index” is. Whatever their origins, immigrants to America outperform most “native born” Americans because they haven’t had resourcefulness, gratitude, curiosity, imagination and appreciation schooled out of them by the cultural elites.
With all its horrific history of racism, exploitation and oppression, and despite the best efforts of the right and the left to censor, cancel and gin up hatred, America today (and Detroit) is far and away the freest country in the planet where people of all colors, backgrounds, religions and experiences have something close to a fair shot at making it out of the misery that they were born into. Check out the Southern border.
Please include in your study of “thriving” the institutionalization and celebration of a culture of mediocrity here in Detroit, at home, in the schools, in the churches, in the non profits, and in City Council. Please examine the endless government programs the end result of which (and implicit if unspoken purpose) is more and more dependency and less and less agency. Please at least entertain the idea that the exchange of one’s resourcefulness for handouts is a deal with the devil that will never benefit the individual or the community.
And lastly, if 40k a year is “half” a salary, in the interest of accurate and meaningful research, you may wish to consider expanding your social circle to include the other 80% of Detroiters for whom 40k = 100% of the yearly income.