What Happens When Black Women Finally say “Enough”
Link to original piece for Originally published by Nappy Head Club
August 24, 2020
Megan Thee Stallion took to Instagram live on Thursday, August 20 to confirm to the world had already assumed: “Since y’all hoes so worried ‘bout it — yes this nigga Tory [Lanez] shot me…Stop trying to come on the internet and act like a Black woman — a grown-ass Black woman — really got any reason to be lying on another grown-ass Black man. If you really want to tell the truth…even though he shot me I tried to spare him. And y’all not sparing me. That’s crazy.”
The dialogue around Megan being shot has been exhausting to witness, to say the least. Twitter users have called her a snitch and a liar, ultimately pressuring her to post graphic photos of her post-op bullet wound.
Ever since 19-year old Florida activist Oluwatoyin Salau was found dead after being raped and murdered by a 49-year-old Black man, and the subsequent rap beef between J. Cole and Noname, there’s been what seems like a weekly social media debate on whether or not Black women deserve to be free from harm — particularly from Black men. And the ongoing erasure of Black women from national discussions about police brutality à la George Floyd receiving global protests calling for his justice with Breonna Taylor’s name tacked on as a footnote and ultimately commodified. Megan being shot hardly tipped it over the edge.
“The police was literally killing Black people for no reason…You think I’m ‘bout to tell the police that we got a gun in the car?” Megan continued on IG live. “You want me to tell the laws that we got a gun in the care so they can shoot all of us up?”
This was indicative of yet another situation in which the plight of the Black man was thrust to the forefront of national dialogue while Black women and Black gender non-conforming folks were left with scraps to accept as progress. Another instance in which cisgendered, heterosexual Black men’s liberation was prioritized while the rest of us have to suffer the privilege and capacity for harm they still hold within a patriarchal, cis-heteronormative society.
I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what it is about Black women that engenders so much vitriol in people. I believe now that Black women — especially Black trans women, Black women who are sexually confident, dark-skinned Black women, fat Black women, Black women who are talented and/or successful, Black women who are unapologetic about themselves and the lives they choose for themselves — personify everything we are taught to hate in society. We embody all the things we’re told Black people and women should not be, cannot be.
History would tell us — boast even — about Black women’s ability to protect each other when no one else will, to be resilient, to rise like a rose from concrete when the world has, for generations, broken our backs and beaten us down while simultaneously demanding every bit of our emotional, physical, and mental labor. I believe Black women accept this characterization because it makes us feel as though some of it was for a greater purpose. We constantly work, whether knowingly or on a subconscious level, to defy age-old stereotypes which label us equal parts too much and not enough.
Personally, operating under such stereotypes has left me stuck and silent when trying to process and respond to instances like these — when I see women who look like me, women I admire go through so much without a single complaint — as to not seem bitter or angry. Without many blueprints to tell you how to reject even the hint of disrespect, it was refreshing to see Megan reject that notion entirely and publicly call out her abuser and the individuals and social media trolls who enabled his actions and a greater culture of violence against Black women. Now, the conversation becomes about how perpetrators of harm will be brought to justice.
As we collectively explore what “justice” looks like for these Black women specifically and what a world on the other side of harm looks like as we simultaneously address violence from the carceral state, we are forced to acknowledge the ugliest aspects of our society and, more importantly, ourselves. The parts of ourselves that are capable of perpetuating harm or, at best, remaining complicit while it rears its ugly head. In conversations about what it means to “protect Black women,” I don’t genuinely believe enough of us have truly committed to that work.
Protecting Black women requires Black men to give up their desperation to mimic white male privilege. Protecting Black women requires Black cisgendered women to stand up for our trans sisters. It requires all of us to reject our desires of whiteness and cis-heteronormativity and commit to working towards Black liberation for all of us.
At this present moment, “Protect Black Women” seems like nothing more than a catchy slogan for some (read: Black men) to placate their egos and absolve themselves of deep work and genuine self-confrontation. “I love Black women” — but only when it benefits you. Only when you’re receiving something on the other side of that bargain whether that be virtue-signaling or something from Black women themselves. Only (and this is often a reach) when it’s your mother, sister, daughter, cousin, homegirl, or a woman you’re romantically entangled with. For Black women, the phrase reads like a neatly presented and politically correct cry for help, indicative of a quiet rage that is quickly bubbling to the surface.
While Black men abusers like Tory Lanez, Talib Kweli, Russell Simmons, Trey Songz, Nas, and myriad others continue to be platformed even after their abuse of well-known Black women is made public, it doesn’t offer much hope to Black women without platforms of their own who’ve experienced harm at their hands and even more so to those who experience harm at the hands of regular, everyday Black men. So what does protecting Black women look like without camera phones and social media to sound the alarm? What does it look like when we refuse to hold each other accountable or accept being held to account?
At this moment, what protecting Black women looks like for me is firstly for Black men to stop being so complacent with the world harming us, assuming they aren’t themselves the primary wielders of said harm. Continuing down your current path will not give you the access, power, or self-worth that you’re led to believe any semblance of proximity to whiteness will afford you. It will not erase the parts of yourself that Black women mirror back to you.
Protecting Black women, for me, looks like other women — specifically white women, non-Black women of color, light-skinned and multiracial Black women to stop blindly accepting (or reflect on why you knowingly accept) the privileges made possible for you only by the degradation of dark-skinned Black women.
What I imagine liberation for Black women to look like is not a world in which the world bows to our feet (although that sounds wonderful in theory) nor is it a world in which Black men swoop in to save us at each and every threat of danger. I think that type of performative worship places Black women on a pedestal that further dehumanizes us by creating unrealistic expectations of strength, perfection, and resilience and paternalizes us by making everyone think we are not capable of taking care of ourselves. It’s the fact that we have to because the world leaves us defenseless.
My freedom dream as a Black woman is for a world in which we are regarded in the fullness of our humanity just like everyone else. A world where we are given the room and resources to make shit happen for our own lives on our own volition. Where we don’t have to beg for our lives and to be treated with respect on the internet each and every day. Where we are believed when we speak up about our trauma the very first time.
I know that my voice is not representative of all Black women, but I feel like most of us will agree that we’d simply rather be doing anything else than having the same repetitive conversations about whether and how much we matter. And that long list of other things starts with living our lives.
