Redefining Community: From Roots to the Digital Age

-- By NilePierre - 16 Dec 2024

Expansion of Communities

In a Post-Trump (and Pre-Trump?) era, one word keeps coming up - “community.”

A Forbes article from 2020 entitled “How To Build Community And Why It Matters So Much” gives people tips on something that I thought was human nature. But perhaps in a world of political turmoil and the internet, what once was ingrained in us now must be learned.

Kamala tweeted on Oct. 2, days before she lost to Trump: “Over the next 9 days, let’s be intentional about building community. Let’s be intentional about building coalitions. Let’s understand that we have so much more in common than what separates us.”

I used to think I knew what a community was, how they were formed, and who made up mine. But with the repeated rhetoric surrounding the word, and the expansion of communities with the internet, I’m left questioning my own understanding.

Communities Pre-Internet

Nothing mattered more to my mother than her community. She was raised in Edwards, Mississippi, a town that has never had a population over 1000. She had fifteen siblings and grew up on a farm. The center of her community was her family and the all black church that her parents helped build in the middle of the town. The blackness of her community can’t be understated enough - with the KKK meeting in the woods across from the home her father built for her family, the racial divide could not be clearer.

No matter where life took her, from Alabama to Texas, Abu Dhabi, Los Angeles, and eventually back to Mississippi, she carried this community with her. She raised me in an all black church filled with country old black folk that she somehow found in Los Angeles. We spent at least 15 hours a week in that church. She made it a point to go back to Edwards as often as possible. She was the one who made sure her family stayed in touch, hosting Thanksgiving and planning Christmas. Even though she had become a successful black female engineer in an era where that simply did not exist, her community and commitment to them was unchanged. Protecting and preserving this community was second nature, unconcerned with changing economic status or geographic location.

I thought I inherited my community from her. The people back in Edwards, my aunts, uncles and cousins, my own siblings and father, and my church family were my people to preserve and protect. I added to this a small number made up of my four best friends that I met in pre-k and middle school. For me, this was my community and what I held dear.

Are Online Communities Diluting Our Understanding of the Word?

There are now “communities” that exist solely online. X has dedicated communities based on topics and interests. Facebook groups are one of the site’s most popular features, which they pitch as communities in themselves. “When you're starting a new community, the most important thing to think of is what the communities' purpose is going to be, and the rule set that you need to create to make it that.” Jeff, Facebook Community Admin. The internet, particularly through social media, has created online communities that are made up of people who would have never been in a community without the tool. You can find yourself in an online community with people who are twice your ages and live thousands of miles away. Through a shared interest or topic, you are now in community with that person.

These communities look a lot different than the ones my mother grew up with. These communities have set rules and moderators. These communities are unforgiving when these rules are violated, not built on unconditional love or the understanding of a family and neighbors. These communities are built of strangers who might not recognize each other on the street. While an online community might share a passion for a hobby or political opinion, members might not know anything else about another member other than the fact that they share an interest. Meanwhile, my mom knew the life story, joys, losses, and favorite foods of those in her community. She knew their parents and their parent’s parents. It was this deep knowing that led to her dedication to her community. This kind of intimacy is rare to find in online communities, and yet they share the same name.

How the Internet Shifted My Community

Without me even knowing, the internet managed to transform my definition of community. Identified so much with the pain of Black people when conversations of police violence broke out online that I began to see every Black person as someone in my community. I supported Kamala so strongly that her supporters and online campaign joined my community. Taking a step back, I’m deeply uncomfortable with this. How can I preserve and protect a community that includes so many people? How can this expansion not minimize the quality of my knowing my community?

It’s become clear to me that online communities dilute the depth, intimacy, and authenticity of traditional communities like the ones I grew up understanding through my mother.

Conclusion

In the end, I’m left wondering if the word “community” has lost some of its meaning. My mom’s community was built on a lifetime of shared experiences, deep knowing, and an unshakable sense of responsibility. My own understanding of community has expanded in ways I never expected- connected to Black people across the country, to political campaigns, to strangers on the internet. But as my community has grown, it feels like it’s become harder to hold onto. We are being pushed to build and protect our communities in the Trump era. How do you protect something so big, so scattered, so intangible? Maybe community is no longer something for us to inherit. Maybe it’s something we have to redefine, piece by piece, and figure out what’s worth preserving and what’s just noise.