One ‘Man Down’; Rape Culture Still Standing

One ‘Man Down’; Rape Culture Still Standing

by Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan

Art should disturb the public square and Rihanna has done just that with the music video for her song “Man Down,” directed by long-time collaborator Anthony Mandler. The song and video tell the story of a casual encounter in a Jamaican dancehall, that turns into a rape, when a young woman rejects the sexual advances of the man she has just danced with. Much of the negative criticism directed at “Man Down” revolves a revenge act, where Rihanna’s character shoots her rapist in cold-blood.

Some have found the gun violence in video’s opening sensationalist and gratuitous. The Parents Television Council chided Rihanna, offering that “Instead of telling victims they should seek help, Rihanna released a music video that gives retaliation in the form of premeditated murder the imprimatur of acceptability.” Paul Porter, co-founder of the influential media watchdog Industry Ears, suggested that a double standard existed, noting that, “If Chris Brown shot a woman in his new video and BET premiered it, the world would stop.” Both responses have some validity, but they also willfully dismiss the broader contexts in which rape functions in our society. Such violence becomes a last resort for some women, because of the insidious ways rape victims are demonized and rapists are protected in American society.

Part of the problem with Rihanna and Anthony Mandler’s intervention, is the problem of the messenger herself. For far too many Rihanna’s objectivity remains suspect in the incidence of partner violence, that was her own life. As a pop-Top 40 star who has consistently delivered pabulum to the masses, minus any of the irony that we would assign to Lady Gaga or even Beyonce, there are some who will simply refuse to take Rihanna seriously—dismissing this intervention as little more than stylized violence in the pursuit of maintaining the re-boot. Porter, for example, argues that BET was willing to co-sign the video, which debuted on the network, all in the name of securing Rihanna’s talents for the upcoming BET Awards Show. It’s that very level of cynicism that makes public discussions of rape so difficult to engage.

I imagine that much less criticism would have been levied at Erykah Badu, Marsha Ambrosias or Mary J. Blige for the same intervention, in large part because they are thought to possess a gravitas—hard-earned, no doubt—that Rihanna doesn’t. This particular aspect of the response to Rihanna’s “Man Down” video highlights the troubling tendency, among critics and fans, to limit the artistic ambitions of artists, particularly women and artists of color. Rihanna’s music has never been great art (nor should it have to be), but that doesn’t mean that the visual presentation of her music can’t be provocative and meaningful in ways that we nominally assign to art. Additionally, responses to “Man Down” also adhere to the long established practice of rendering all forms of Black expressions as a form of Realism, aided and abetted by a celebrity culture that consistently blurs the lines between the real and the staged.

Ultimately discussions of “Man Down” should pivot on whether the gun shooting that opens the video was a measured and appropriate response to an act of rape. Perhaps in some simplistic context, such violence might seem unnecessary, yet in a culture that consistently diminishes the violence associated with rape, often employing user friendly euphemisms like sexual violence—as was the case in the initial New York Times coverage of a recent Texas gang rape case—rather than call a rape a rape. As an artistic statement, intended to disturb the public square, Rihanna’s deployment of the gun is an appropriate response to the relative silence associated with acts of rape, let alone the residual violence that women accusers are subject to in the denial and dismissal of their victimization with terms like “she deserved it,” or “she was asking for it” because of her style of dress.

One wishes that as much energy that was expended criticizing Rihanna’s video for its gun violence was expended to address the ravages of the rape culture that we live in. One man may be down, but rape culture is still standing.

***

Mark Anthony Neal, a Professor of African-American Studies at Duke University, is the author of five books, including the forthcoming Looking for Leroy and the co-editor (with Murray Forman) of That's the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (2nd Edition) which will be published next month.  Follow him on Twitter @NewBlackMan

Loaded Guns, Loaded Metaphors: Rihanna’s “Man Down” Video

Loaded Guns, Loaded Metaphors: 

Rihanna’s “Man Down” Video

by Janell Hobson | Ms. Magazine

Rihanna has a genius for controversy. As soon as the music video for her latest single, “Man Down,” premiered this week on BET’s 106 & Park, it created an instant backlash from various groups demanding it be banned from television. However, the outcry is not about depictions of S&M fantasies or a same-sex kiss or even passive acceptance of domestic violence. This time, she is being condemned for promoting murder.

I have to wonder if I’ve seen the same video.

I see a revenge story by a rape survivor, who makes it clear that, no matter what a woman wears or how she dances or if she walks alone at night, rape is wrong and deserves punishment. Rihanna reiterated this message when she broadcast on Twitter:

Young girls/women all over the world … we are a lot of things! We’re strong innocent fun flirtatious vulnerable, and sometimes our innocence can cause us to be naïve! We always think it could NEVER be us, but in reality, it can happen to ANY of us! So ladies be careful and #listentoyomama! I love you and I care!

While I understand the moral concerns about popular messages that condone violence, the hue and cry over this video seem to reflect a deeper anxiety. After all, if parental groups worry that pop stars such as Rihanna are encouraging young women to seek violent retribution, then I wish they would also condemn blockbuster action movies, video games and comic books that preach the same message to young boys. 

Or is it perfectly okay for action figures like Thor or Batman or a regular American G.I. to seek justice through violent means? And what does it mean for the larger public to loudly condemn a fictional scene of a rape victim grabbing her gun and pulling the trigger on her perpetrator, especially when other violent representations in media are not condemned but championed?

Read the Full Essay @ Ms. Magazine

Reading the Language of Rape Culture

WUNC 91.5
The State of Things | Frank Stasio

Reading the Language of Rape Culture
Wednesday, April 06 2011

Most cases of rape and sexual assault never make the news. But in recent weeks, horrific stories about victims of sexual violence have created national headlines. Some language used in the reporting of these cases and public reactions to them has caused controversy. How we articulate ideas about rape sheds light on American perceptions of violence, gender and race. Host Frank Stasio discusses the language and the law surrounding rape with a panel of guests including documentary filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons; Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African and African-American Studies at Duke University; Melissa Harris-Perry, associate professor of politics and African-American Studies at Princeton University; and Mary R. Block, associate professor of history at Valdosta State University.

Listen Here

William Jelani Cobb: " Cleveland, Texas and Gender Jim Crow"

from The Nation

Cleveland, Texas and Gender Jim Crow
by William Jelani Cobb | March 29, 2011

In the three weeks since the New York Times [1] broke the story [1] of a child’s rape there, the events in Cleveland, Texas, have morphed into a category five media storm. The Times piece, which echoed and amplified currents of victim-blaming in the town, generated a tide of criticism. Yet beneath the outrage was a parable of modern media. Aside from the familiar and incendiary themes it contained, the Times article seemed an object lesson in what happens when cash-strapped newspapers parachute a reporter into a complex situation hoping for coverage on the cheap. In-depth coverage requires resources and the time to do the deliberate, painstaking gathering of facts that were in short supply in James McKinley’s article. “The New York Times,” as one friend put it, “can no longer afford nuance.”

Add to that equation the fact that Twitter-orchestrated protests, web petitions and Facebook posts pushed the Times to apologize (or at least come close to it), and our understanding of the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl becomes yet another front in the battles between old and new media. Even the way the assault became public knowledge—digital images traded around on cellphones—seems to be part of the narrative of modern technology and information.

Yet for all this modernity, the most troubling aspect of the ongoing fallout from Cleveland is the way it resurrects themes of race, sexual violence and provincialism long interred in American history. Some weeks ago I taught students in my civil rights history class about the plague of lynching, which claimed the lives of more than 3,000 African-Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beyond the horror of the organized murder of black citizens, students were most troubled by the recreational nature of it all: the images of smiling white citizens, fathers and sons, upstanding Christians gathered in fellowship around the smoldering ruin of a black body—all preserved on postcards.

If you asked any of these people in the abstract if it is right to hang a person, set him on fire and then riddle the body with bullets, they would likely have called those actions illegal and sinful. But there is an asterisk: unless that person was black; unless he had demanded his wages, or been to slow to vacate a sidewalk when a white person walked by, or been “unpopular” (these are all actual reasons cited for lynching). These are actions of people who have been given a moral escape clause, an asterisk in which upstanding Christians can sate the demonic appetites of their collective id. Thus an act of abomination becomes a moment worthy of commemorating with a photograph.

I thought about that discussion of lynching again as news spread that the alleged perpetrators were so utterly secure in the righteousness of their act that some of them snapped pictures or recorded footage on their cellphones. We have, in 2011, reached a point when the public display of charred human remains is no longer acceptable. But the response of some of the citizens of Cleveland, Texas, to this horrific assault has brought us face to face with a kind of gender Jim Crow. Here the asterisk is not failure to conform to racial etiquette but the lax adherence to an equally stringent gender code, one where “innocent” is a relative concept and rape, like lynching, can be elevated nearly to the level of civic responsibility.

Read the Full Essay @ The Nation

The New York Times and the Language of Rape

The New York Times and the Language of Rape
by Mark Anthony Neal

The story of an 11-year-old girl, who was purportedly raped by nearly two dozen men and boys is beyond heartbreaking. As the father of two girls and the friend and “brother” of far too many rape survivors, I can’t even begin to imagine the trauma that the girl and her family are experiencing. But the New York Times’ coverage of case directs another round of violence at the girl, embracing a narrative of the story that places the onus on the very victim of the rape.

18 men and boys have been officially charged in the rape the 11-year-old girl in an abandoned trailer home. The police investigation of the case was aided by the fact that some of the accused boys and men took pictures and videotaped the attack on the girl with their cell phones.

The case seems clear cut; there is no legal context in which an 11-year-old child can have consensual sex. If any of those boys or men penetrated the girl with their penises, a gang rape occurred. Yet New York Times reporter James C. McKinley, Jr. , who is the Houston bureau chief for the newspaper, chose to present a narrative that consistently suggested some culpability by the girl in the attacks on her.

McKinley’s mistake was to invest in community narratives, largely constructed around protecting the reputation of the town, Cleveland, TX and the images of the accused boys and men—virtually all African-American. How else can you explain why early in the article McKinley paraphrases town residents who wonder “how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?” as if the victim was some kind of professional sex worker.

Throughout, McKinley quotes residents lamenting how the charges will affect the future prospects of the suspects and devotes an entire paragraph to a resident who questions where the girl’s parents were. In other portions of the article McKinley gives voice—credence really—to residents who claimed that the girl “dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s” and that “she would hang out with teenage boys at a playground” as if either point is justification for rape. That McKinley, the New York Times and those town residents that were quoted should know better, seems beyond the point.

I suspect that McKinley was trying to be racially sensitive to the African-American community in Cleveland, Texas particularly given historical narratives that depict Black men as habitual rapists—the Scottsboro Boys immediately come to mind. But in his haste to be politically correct, the integrity of the 11-year-old girl was sacrificed. In the hierarchies of race and ethnicity that this nation continues to reproduce, an 11-year-old Hispanic girl was deemed expendable, as is often the case with young Black girls in such cases.

The politics of race and ethnicity will likely obscure the real issue at hand in the New York Times' coverage of the case: we continue to live in a nation that encourages rape, even sanctions it—what some rightly call a rape culture—because we are fundamentally unwilling to invoke the language that correctly captures the brutality of such acts. A rape is a rape—not an act of sexual violence, not a forced sex act, not a misunderstanding. If our major corporate media outlets are unwilling to call rape by its name, than how can we expect our children to know what rape is?

On the way home this evening, I had a difficult conversation with my 12-year-old daughter about this case, and like so many of these conversations, much of it centered on the responsibility she will have to take to protect herself in a rape culture. Sadly, I suspect that if she has children of her own, the conversation will not have changed much.

For Colored Boys Who Have Survived Sexual Abuse, Is “For Colored Girls” Enuf?

For Colored Boys Who Have Survived Sexual Abuse, Is “For Colored Girls” Enuf?
by Jennifer Williams

On November 5, Oprah Winfrey aired the first of a two-part episode on male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Two hundred men stood in the audience, each holding a photograph taken at the age their innocence was stolen by the priest, babysitter, or parent who molested them. Filmmaker Tyler Perry was among them, just two weeks after he had shared his childhood experiences with physical and sexual abuse for the first time with a television audience on Oprah.

Perry initially disclosed his abuse last year in a lengthy letter he addressed to his fans and posted on his website. In the letter, Perry revealed that viewing Lee Daniels’ Precious, a film based on Sapphire’s novel Push, triggered a series of traumatic memories from his childhood, including being brutally beaten numerous times by his father, raped by his friend’s mother and molested by a male church member. Like the character Precious, he said, he used his imagination to escape his body.

Perry’s appearances on Oprah coincide with the release of his film For Colored Girls, adapted from Ntozake Shange’s 1975 Obie award-winning play. Perry’s recent airing of his childhood sexual abuse also comes on the heels of several other black men publicly coming out of the closet about childhood sexual abuse.

Read the Full Essay @ Ms. Blog

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Jennifer Williams is a writer and professor of English at New York University. She blogs at "for colored girls who drink cosmos when suicide seems to gauche."

Quintin Dailey at Rest

from the New York Times

Quintin Dailey, Gifted but Troubled Player, Dies at 49
By Douglas Martin

Quintin Dailey, a talented but troubled basketball player whose missteps, including a sexual assault conviction, contributed to the University of San Francisco’s decision to drop its storied basketball program for three years, died Monday in Las Vegas. He was 49.

The cause was hypertensive cardiovascular disease, a spokeswoman for the Clark County Coroner’s Office said.

Dailey broke scoring records and earned all-American honors at San Francisco, whose teams, led by the likes of Bill Russell and K. C. Jones, had won two consecutive N.C.A.A. championships and 60 consecutive games from 1954 to 1956 and 15 West Coast Athletic Conference championships.

Dailey, 6 feet 3 and 180 pounds, averaged 20.5 points a game in his three years and 25.2 as a junior. He broke Bill Cartwright’s team record for most points in a season, 717, scoring 755.

But Dailey’s aura was shattered in 1982 when he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a nursing student in a dormitory. The woman said he had been drunk and had threatened her with a weapon but did not rape her. A state court sentenced him to three years’ probation.

A document in the case revealed that Dailey had accepted $1,000 a month from a San Francisco booster for a summer job he did not have to do. The university had already been placed on probation for violating N.C.A.A. rules in the 1979-80 and 1980-81 basketball seasons. For the university, the Dailey revelation “was the last straw,” said Dan Johnson, a lawyer for the university.

In announcing the termination of intercollegiate basketball in July 1982, the Rev. John Lo Schiavo, president of the university, a Jesuit institution, said the program had become perceived as “hypocritical or naïve or inept or duplicitous, or perhaps some combination of these.”

He added, “All the legitimate purposes of an athletic program in an educational institution are being distorted by the athletic program as it developed.”

Basketball returned to the University of San Francisco three years later.

Dailey said he had pleaded guilty to the assault charge mainly to get the matter out of the way before the N.B.A. draft, which was being held three days later. After the Chicago Bulls made him their first draft pick, he told reporters that he had pleaded guilty only to stay out of jail, that he felt no remorse and that he had “forgotten” the whole episode.

The next year, in 1983, he was forced to remember. He settled a suit by the nursing student who had accused him of the assault, Vickie Brick, by paying her $100,000 and publicly apologizing.

Nevertheless, women’s groups protested his arrival in Chicago; anonymous callers threatened his life, apartment complexes turned him down as a resident and fans booed him everywhere.

“I can’t help believing that if Dailey weren’t a basketball player, if he were just another creep off the street, he would still be learning what a chamber of horrors the halls of justice can be,” John Schulian, a columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times, wrote.

Dailey responded by making the N.B.A.’s 1982-83 all-rookie team. Over a 10-year N.B.A. career with four teams, he averaged 14.1 points a game. His most productive year was 1985-86, when he averaged 16.3 points a game for the Bulls. After four seasons with Chicago, he played for the Los Angeles Clippers, the Seattle SuperSonics and the Los Angeles Lakers.

He had problem upon problem, many self-induced. He missed practices and games, gained 30 pounds in a single season, twice violated the league’s drug policy, once attempted suicide and took leaves of absence for psychiatric care.

“I had to learn life by trial and error as I went along,” he said in a 1988 interview with The Los Angeles Times. “I erred a lot.”

Quintin Dailey was born on Jan. 22, 1961, in Baltimore. His parents died within a month of each other when he was teenager. A stellar basketball player in high school, he was recruited by more than 200 colleges. At San Francisco, he majored in communications and was a campus disc jockey.

Dailey’s marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his daughter, Quinci, and his son, Quinton Jr., who is a guard on the Eastern Michigan University basketball team.

Dailey, whose last job was as a supervisor for the Clark County Parks Department in Nevada, had a penchant for pungent quotes. In 1985, he complained to The Chicago Tribune that Bulls coaches favored Michael Jordan over him.

“I’m a player who likes to shine a little bit myself,” he said.

Still No Justice for Civil Rights Era Rapes

Recy Taylor

Still no justice for civil rights-era rapes
by Errin Haines

ATLANTA -- Years before Rosa Parks fought for justice from her seat on a Montgomery bus, she fought for Recy Taylor.

Parks was an NAACP activist crisscrossing Alabama in 1944 when she came across the case of Taylor, a 24-year-old wife and mother who was brutally gang raped and dumped on the side of a rural road. Taylor survived only to watch two all-white, all-male grand juries decline to indict the six white men who admitted to authorities that they assaulted her.

Taylor was one of many black women attacked by white men during an era in which sexual assault was used to informally enforce Jim Crow segregation. Their pain galvanized an anti-rape crusade that ultimately took a back seat to the push to dismantle officially sanctioned separation of the races, and slowly faded from the headlines.

Many of these rape victims never got justice and the desire for closure is still there, more than 60 years later - leaving some to wonder what, if anything, can be done to address the wrongs done to them.

"I didn't get nothing, ain't nothing been done about it," Taylor, now 90, told The Associated Press in a phone interview from her central Florida home. The AP is revealing Taylor's identity because she has publicly identified herself as a victim of sexual assault.

"I was an honest person and living right," Taylor said. "They shouldn't have did that. I never give them no reason to do it."

For 20 years after she was raped, Taylor and her family lived in the same Abbeville, Ala., community as the families of her attackers. She spent many years living in fear, and says local whites continued to treat her badly, even after her assailants left town.

Evelyn Lowery, an activist whose husband, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, worked with Martin Luther King Jr., suggested that an apology from the government could be a start to the healing.

"I certainly think it would be in order," Evelyn Lowery said. "For many years, they tried to say that women were the cause of this, that (black) women wanted sexual activity. ... It hasn't been true, but the courts used that to justify not taking action on behalf of the women. It was very demoralizing to all of us."

Taylor is not inclined to pursue a civil case. She believes most, if not all, of her attackers are dead. But she does find the idea of an official apology appealing.

"It would mean a whole lot to me," Taylor said. "The people who done this to me ... they can't do no apologizing. Most of them is gone."

Danielle McGuire, a history professor at Wayne State University who has documented the women's advocacy and Taylor's story in a new book, cites numerous instances of black women enduring unwanted sexual encounters from white men in cities in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Arkansas. Adding to the indignity, McGuire said, was the knowledge that black men - many of them innocent - were accused of and severely punished for the same or lesser crimes against white women. In some cases, they paid with their lives.

Read the Full Essay @ AP

'Left of Black': Episode #3 featuring Salamishah Tillet and David Ikard

Host Mark Anthony Neal Discusses Sexual Predators with University of Pennsylvania Professor Salamishah Tillet & Florida State University Professor David Ikard.

Professor Tillet is Founder of A Long Walk Home, a non-profit organization that uses art therapy and the visual and performance arts to document, to educate and to bring about social change.

Professor Ikard is the author of Breaking the Silence: Toward a Black Male Feminist Criticism.

Broken Social Contracts: The Impact of Campus Sexual Violence (Part 3)

PART 3 of the 6 PART SERIES of Broken Social Contracts: The Commodity of Women's Bodies

Spelman College's 2007 Violence Against Women's Class and Atlanta University Center Community discuss the impact of sexual violence on their campuses. Also appearance by Rudolph Byrd, Phd of Emory University

www.LauraRahman.com

E:60 on Corrective Rape

from ESPN.Go.Com

Jeremy Schaap speaks with South African women soccer players who say they were beaten and raped because they are lesbians. Editor's note: This story and video contain mature subject matter.

Haiti Update: Rape in the Camps

from Democracy Now!

Rape in the Camps:

Lacking Security, Women Organize to Protect Themselves

Something that gets lost in all the coverage of the Haiti earthquake is how people on the ground organize in the face of adversity. Rape and violence against women has become increasingly widespread in the tent camps across Haiti. While Haitian police and UN forces have done little, women on the ground are organizing to protect themselves. We spoke with Malia Villard Appolon, coordinator of KOFAVIV, the committee of women for survival.

'Broken Social Contracts': Sexual Violence at HBCUs (Part 2)

PART 2 of the 6 PART SERIES of Broken Social Contracts: The Commodity of Women's Bodies

Appearances by: Cynthia Neal Spence, PhD, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, PhD, Johnnetta B. Cole,PhD, Mark Anthony Neal, PhD, Pearl Cleage, Patricia McFadden,PhD, Adia Harvey Wingfield,PhD, and Brittny Ray,

www.LauraRahman.com

'Broken Social Contracts': Sexual Violence at HBCUs (Part 1)

from LauraRahman.com

Synopsis

Laura Rahman’s film explores female and male relationships on the backdrop of two elite historically black colleges, Spelman and Morehouse (sister/brother institutions) in Atlanta, Georgia surrounding allegations of sexual assault on their campuses during the 2006 semester. Broken Social Contracts provides analyses beyond these two institutions through its interwoven poignant testimonials of activists, students, and scholars on gender roles within our society. Broken Social Contracts is a catalyst for stimulating conversation, while demonstrating how to engage in healthy relationships.

Statistics of sexual violence in our relationships are jarring and disturbing. Broken Social Contracts creates a profound opportunity of discovery and addresses the necessity for open dialogue within institutions of higher learning. The film brings voice to many of whom are often not discussed in our circles of influence.

This is a film that addresses us ALL across race, class and gender!

In Case We Are Confused About What Rape Is...

Trailer for Breaking Silences: A Supplemental Video to NO!™ The Rape Documentary, which features selected in-depth excerpts from the thirty plus hours of footage that didn't make it into the award winning, internationally acclaimed NO!™ The Rape Documentary.

Produced and directed by Aishah Shahidah Simmons, This comprehensive video is compartmentalized into five individual segments, which feature compelling messages from women and men violence prevention advocates/activists and riveting testimonials from women who are multiple survivors of sexual violence.

www.NOtheRapeDocumentary.org

We are not your weapons – we are women

We Are Not Your Weapons – We Are Women

by Amanda Kijera, civic journalist and activist in Haiti

Two weeks ago, on a Monday morning, I started to write what I thought was a very clever editorial about violence against women in Haiti. The case, I believed, was being overstated by women’s organizations in need of additional resources. Ever committed to preserving the dignity of Black men in a world which constantly stereotypes them as violent savages, I viewed this writing as yet one more opportunity to fight “the man” on behalf of my brothers. That night, before I could finish the piece, I was held on a rooftop in Haiti and raped repeatedly by one of the very men who I had spent the bulk of my life advocating for.

It hurt. The experience was almost more than I could bear. I begged him to stop. Afraid he would kill me, I pleaded with him to honor my commitment to Haiti, to him as a brother in the mutual struggle for an end to our common oppression, but to no avail. He didn’t care that I was a Malcolm X scholar. He told me to shut up, and then slapped me in the face. Overpowered, I gave up fighting halfway through the night.

Accepting the helplessness of my situation, I chucked aside the Haiti bracelet I had worn so proudly for over a year, along with it, my dreams of human liberation. Someone, I told myself, would always be bigger and stronger than me. As a woman, my place in life had been ascribed from birth. A Chinese proverb says that “women are like the grass, meant to be stepped on.” The thought comforted me at the same time that it made me cringe.

A dangerous thought. Others like it have derailed movements, discouraged consciousness and retarded progress for centuries. To accept it as truth signals the beginning of the end of a person–or community’s–life and ability to self-love. Resignation means inertia, and for the past two weeks I have inhabited its innards. My neighbors here include women from all over the world, but it’s the women of African descent, and particularly Haitian women, who move me to write now.

Truly, I have witnessed as a journalist and human rights advocate the many injustices inflicted upon Black men in this world. The pain, trauma and rage born of exploitation are terrors that I have grappled with every day of my life. They make one want to strike back, to fight rabidly for what is left of their personal dignity in the wake of such things. Black men have every right to the anger they feel in response to their position in the global hierarchy, but their anger is misdirected.

Read the Full Essay @ Race-Talk

Trenton, Irresponsible Black Girls, and Savior Russell Simmons

Trenton, Irresponsible Black Girls, and Savior Russell Simmons
by Fallon

My heart grieves not only for the seven year old black girl who was gang raped, but also for her 15 year old sister who sold her body and her sister’s body for money. Yes, my heart grieves even though many people are angry with the older sister for not protecting her little sister calling for “the book to be thrown at her.” To say the least, the big sister is going to jail for a very long time. But yet, my heart weeps for her as it wept for Precious’ mother, Mary. It weeps because it says something about the level of sexual abuse she herself must have experienced to make the idea of being complicit in her sister’s rape plausible. My heart moans because she like other girls knows that they can make a living by selling their bodies. It wails and weeps because no one stepped in to stop her first sexual abuse. My heart grieves.

The question is: Can we really be angry with the 15 year old sister for what she did? And I am having a hard time answering this question because a part of me wants to be angry at her for not protecting her little sister. However, I have to assess how much of my sadness and anger is in response to the crime of rape and how much of it is in response to her not being a good big sister. You know the type of big sister my older sister was forced to be completely responsible for raising me when she was only a girl herself because . . . momma had to work late . . . momma did not like being tied down . . . daycare is expensive . . . momma had a second job . . . momma was gone . . . momma had to party . . . daddy was gone . . . so she became responsible for raising and protecting “us” her younger siblings.

Read the Full Essay @ The Black Youth Project

7-Year-old Raped; A Child Responds

A 12 Year Old Responds To The Raping Of A 7 Year Old In Trenton, NJ

by Marypat Hector

How can anyone breathing sit silently as young girls are being raped? While a young girl’s innocence is being stolen like a piece of gum from the candy store? The thought of a seven year old...no the thought of any child being harmed in that way brings a constant flow of tears to my eyes. But then again, as a self made ambassador of peace, I find myself getting angry and must check my feelings and begin to reflect. This is how Martin and Malcolm must have felt when they saw African Americans being lynched.

It makes me wonder why and who has failed us. Yes, we are both victims and perpetrators. But where were the caring adults? What about the neighbors, did they not hear her cries for help? Well, I here your cry and I will be your voice. Sadly, acts of violence like this are happening all over the world. Have adults also become desensitized to the violence?

At seven, a young girl should be playing with brat dolls and deciding what she will be when she gets older. Now, she is plagued with senseless act for the rest of her life. Again, I ask where were the adults, school teachers, neighbors and city officials that are suppose to protect kids from harm?

Read the Full Essay @ Global Grind

'The Precious Specials' - A Conversation with the Brothers

'THE PRECIOUS SPECIALS' - A CONVERSATION WITH THE BROTHERS

Hosted by Esther Armah (WBAI/Wakeup Call)

Guests are: Quintin Walcott, Director of the CONNECT Training Institute and CONNECT’s Male Anti-Violence Initiatives; Mark Anthony Neal, author and Professor of African and African American Studies @ Duke University; Sharif Simmons, Creative Writing Teacher at the Alice Steven Center from 5th Grade to High School in Birmingham Alabama, Poet, Musician and Single Father.

Discussion of Black Male media reactions to the film Precious

Ishmael Read "The Selling of Precious" (Counterpoint)
Armond White "Pride and Precious" (New York Press)

Listen to Conversation HERE

A 'Precious' Debate

“Precious,” about a disadvantaged young woman played by Gabourey Sidibe, left, has sparked controversy over its meaning.

To Blacks, Precious Is ‘Demeaned’ or ‘Angelic’
by FELICIA R. LEE
Published: November 20, 2009

A reinforcement of noxious stereotypes or a realistic and therapeutic portrayal of a black family in America?

“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” the new film about an obese, poor, illiterate, young black woman who is sexually and emotionally abused, has sparked this heartfelt and at times heated debate about its meaning in the two weeks since its limited release.

Now, as it opens nationwide in 100 markets this weekend, the conversation about which black stories are told, and how, is bound to intensify, thanks to post-screening discussion groups; the cultural influence of two of the movie’s executive producers, Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry; and the Oscar buzz the critically acclaimed film has already begun generating.

“In some ways, it’s ‘The Color Purple’ all over again, with people writing and talking about what this film represents,” said Mark Anthony Neal, a professor who teaches black popular culture at Duke University. He was referring to the 1985 film based on the novel by Alice Walker, which was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Ms. Winfrey.

Read full article @ The New York Times