Defend Black Womanhood

 “The most disrespected woman in America, is the black woman. The most un-protected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America, is the black woman.” 

-Malcolm X

 It’s January 5^th, 2019. Parts of the nation have been engrossed and absorbed in “Surviving R. Kelly” – the six-part Lifetime docuseries that not only goes in to explicit details of the physical, mental, and sexual abuse of Kelly’s victims from Kelly’s victims, but it also features interviews and retellings from witnesses who seemed to sit around and watch a grown man take advantage of women and teenage girls. Having only one episode aired, R. Kelly and his legal team are already threatening to sue – probably claiming defamation of character. Lifetime and the victims remained steadfast in their notion that the stories needed to be heard and continued the six-night television event. And although I haven’t watched it, from the reaction of social media, R. Kelly’s sexual relationships and hostages aren’t the only thing we need to address at this time within our people in America.

This isn’t truly about R. Kelly in the grand scheme of things to me. If R. Kelly had someone on his team that would’ve checked him in certain situations, this evil villain would’ve only gained his fame for creating “I Believe I Can Fly.” If the so-called adults in these children’s lives had a better idea of what they were doing in their spare time, they might have dodged their victimhood. But more importantly, in the era of #MeToo, if any of Kelly’s victims were Caucasian woman or girls, he wouldn’t stand a chance. His true fan-base, which stands up to defend him now even while watching the docuseries, wouldn’t have a chance to debate if he was guilty or innocent, because the white population would’ve immediately believed the victims and set upon finding out the truth. Black women aren’t allowed to be the victims – it doesn’t seem to be a role that we can slip into.

It’s a truth that has been around for ages. On a scale of race and gender, it’s common knowledge that a white man is virtually at the top of the food-chain followed by white women. Black men can be begrudgingly found below white women, then men of every other minority fall beneath them. Women of those unnamed minorities end up the second-to-last slot and Black women bring up the rear – we are at the very end, the most neglected person in America.

“de nigger woman is de mule uh de world”- Excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God”

It wouldn’t be as bothersome if this was the scale by which white people made their assumptions. Why should they fight for our equality? They have their own fair-skinned women to look after, although white men usually care only for themselves and leave their ladies as victims for others to defend. The Women’s Suffrage Movement was more of an all-whites for whites type of protest. Upper-class white women were joining and marching the streets, complaining about being stuck in oppressive marriages – they even privately equated their homemaker lives to slavery! The gall of it all! Black women ended up experiencing racism while trying to fight against sexism within one’s own gender.

Black women were left to fend for themselves, and that’s where the issue lies. Where are our black men to help us? If only for the skin-color that were share, you would think that Black men would be the first in line to defend us, not cower behind others who watch and ridicule our existence. It comes in many different forms. In the case of R. Kelly, and other similar situations, if a white woman is a victim, you can rest assured that someone will pay. Infinite man-hours and money will be of no consequence if the victim is brought to justice. If it were a black women or girl, well they were just being “fast.”

I loathe that word and its connotations. "Fast" girls talked with older boys, went into dark empty rooms at house parties, and obviously deserve any sexual abuse dealt her way because of it. These girls are raped by older male family members and dismissed when they speak out about it because they are "fast." We must get rid of the “fast-assed girl” notion, it’s only feeding into the trauma of our race. Black men shouldn’t be encouraging the stigma. I get it, there are bad guys out there – black and white alike – but all it takes is for one to step in and declare the wrong in others’ actions.

My black male friend explained that most of the women who were abused by Kelly were of legal age, and they knew what they were getting into – which is why he felt no remorse about not watching the docu-series and being uninterested in anything other than naming R. Kelly the King of R&B. All the while, in my head, I’m screaming “DEFEND US, FOR ONCE!”

I watched a disturbing video of a cashier at a McDonalds being grabbed by the collar of her shirt, almost dragged over the counter, and berated by an irate male customer over needing a straw for his drink. The cashier was black, the customer was white – and boy, was the customer in for a surprise. The cashier began hurling punches into the customer’s face while yelling for him to let her go. Unsurprisingly, after the two were separated, he demanded that she be fired and quickly tried to claim the status as the victim in this situation. He was arrested, she was eventually fired, but that isn’t what was most upsetting in the video.

During the scuffle, there were at least four black men who witnessed what was happening. Not one of them stepped in to try and get the customer off their co-worker. Not one black man jumped in to fight the customer instead. As a matter of fact, you see a few men jump in to pull the cashier away from the fight, rather than turning their attention to the person who started the altercation – as if she was the one to do something wrong. Luckily for her, she was a former boxer whose skills came back to her instinctively, but what about the women who don’t have those types of skills? Any other women might’ve been severely hurt in this situation, without the aid of four able-bodied men watching nearby.

In 1851, Dr. Samuel Cartwright – physician in the antebellum United States – published “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race.” He asserted that black skin embodied “partial insensibility” that gave them a higher threshold for pain, which made blacks suited for enslavement. A ridiculous claim at any point and time in history, but more reasonable for doctors who practiced during the times of slavery. Sadly, some of those same notions and stereotypes remain in the minds and hearts of those providing healthcare to us.

In 2016, researchers at the University of Virginia quizzed white medical students and residents to see how many believed inaccurate differences about the two races. The researchers found that physician bias is a factor, if not one of the main factors in how different races can be treated for the same illness in different ways. About 58 percent of the study's general group said they believed 'blacks' skin is thicker than whites' - about 40 percent of 1st and 2nd-year medical students and 25 percent of the residents believed the statement to be true. There was also an alarming number of students and new physicians who did not believe true statements about biological differences in the races - for example, only half of the residents knew that whites were less susceptible to heart disease than blacks.

Percentage of white participants endorsing beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites. (Courtesy of PNAS/ Hoffman et al & The Washington Post)

These incorrect notions that seem to rule to minds of white physicians but us in harm’s way more than ever, especially in the direst moments of a woman’s life. One of the leading causes of death for Black Women in the US is pregnancy and/or childbirth-related problems. Serena Williams is a prime example of this. After giving birth to her first daughter, Olympia, Williams admits that she expressed concerns to her nurses about being short of breath and needing a CT scan, but was ignored. After insisting that her physician order the tests, the CT scan was done, and they found life-threatening blood clots in her lungs.

"Doctors aren't listening to us [black women], just to be quite frank," Williams said in an interview with the BBC. "I was in a really fortunate situation where I know my body well, and I am who I am, and I told the doctor: 'I don't feel right, something's wrong.' She immediately listened. Unfortunately, a lot of African Americans and black people don't have the same experience that I've had."

Of course, black men have nothing to do with the bias that white doctors and physicians have against the black race. But I can guarantee that if there was a higher standard fostered by the men in our lives, others would learn to follow and accept it as status quo. Instead, we’re subjugated to being annoying baby mamas and side chicks, and thots, why would other races respect us if our own will not?

It appears we have no one to serve as a defense in our lives which, in turn, leads to most of the misconceptions about black women. We’re not only loud, angry, and disruptive. We have had to learn to carry ourselves a certain way in life in order to be respected and represented fairly. And we’ve had to do it with little to no help from our male skin folk.