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Alright, I’ll bite.
You know how wherever you go, if there’s a Black woman (younger or older) in that space, most of the time you automatically feel a kinship with them? Your natural instinct is to trust and feel safe with them to some capacity?
You know how wherever you go, if there’s a Black woman (younger or older) in that space, most of the time you automatically feel a kinship with them? Your natural instinct is to trust and feel safe with them to some capacity?
So what if I told you that Black women may not as often feel that same sense of kinship and protection from Black men? What if I told you that YOU don’t even often feel that same sense of safety around Black men you don’t know?
Sure, we ALL might have positive relationships with individual Black men in our circles, but I’m willing to argue that we are also not as quick to trust an unfamiliar Black man as we would an unfamiliar Black woman.
You cape for these celebrities who harm women because... well, you’re a misogynist. Society raised you to be a misogynist. And if Tory Lanez wasn’t Tory Lanez and just a random dude, you wouldn’t even care to jump to his defense. He wouldn’t even have a defense.
When folks say “protect Black women” it’s not necessarily about who we’re in proximity to (though that also is important). It’s about disrupting these patterns of abuse and harm. It’s about redefining, collectively, what we understand as masculinity.
“But Mike, we can’t just challenge and speak up to dudes we don’t know! That’s dangerous!” EXACTLY. That’s the problem. The fact that we can’t comfortably challenge other men to treat people better without some expectation of violence illustrates the whole fucking problem.
So what do we do? I don’t have an answer really, because y’all are numerous, hardheaded and dangerous. But let’s stop acting obtuse when we say “Protect Black women” because you know what we mean.
