Tag Archive | black women die from street harassment

Black Lives Matter: These Protestors Do Not Believe Their Own Rhetoric

Black Lives Matter: These Protestors Do Not Believe Their Own Rhetoric

As a Sunni Muslim Black American woman who is CONSTANTLY harassed by ‘Christian’ men on a near daily basis in the State of Maryland and the DC Metropolitan area, I would like to urge all of America to understand that the protestors in Baltimore do not represent all Black Americans. I do not say this to detract from the reality of police misconduct but to look at the types of people and motives of those who are at the core of the protests in the City of Baltimore from day one:

(1) Inner city, uneducated, ghetto Black ‘Christians’. They only state that Black lives matter when one or two white police officers are likely guilty for killing unarmed black male criminal suspect. This displays a SEVERE convenience of their proclaimed belief. One, where were all the protests when some of those very same gang leaders in your community were murdering and aiding in the proliferation of drugs in your neighborhoods–why is it when a handful of police engage in misconduct that you ‘take back’ your communities but not before when you destroy your own inner cities. So, it is acceptable among these inner city Blacks to kill each other off, rape and harass other Blacks but a national protest when law enforcement do it? This is a sick groupthink, ‘gang’ mentality. These protesters do not believe Black lives matter look how they have treated other Blacks for decades.

(2) Black loves matter?: Only if you are ignorant, high school drop out criminal, gang member, drug dealing, cat calling, ignorant street harassing ‘Christian’ male. Notice there is NEVER a protest when a Black woman dies at the hands of Black or white men, these types of people only raise their voices when a black male who is reasonably suspected of criminal activity is injured or dies. Yet, Black ‘Christian’ males are constantly responsible for sexual harassment on the job, and guilty of street harassing and assaulting Black women on a near daily basis. Let alone the high number of domestic violence incidents, Black men living off Black women wages, raping stepchildren, referring to her as ‘that bitch’ ‘situation’ and ‘female’ as if a Black woman should be known as an object or mammal for reproduction purposes only. Who weeps for a Black woman’s safety? even her life?

Where were the protests when Black male street harasser slit the throat of an innocent Black woman who did not want to engage in unsolicited conversation? Where was the so-called Black community’s outrage then?

(3) Black males today as a whole could care less about the safety, honor and respect of Black women. I can say as a Sunni Muslim that street harassment is something I have dealt with nearly my entire adult life in the State of Maryland and now in Howard County, Maryland. From Black, obese, short women accompanied by their Black male counterparts who harass me engage in false imprisonment-yes these Negroes jump in front of the doorway and will block your entry into East Columbia Library (Cradlerock Way, Columbia, Maryland) to throw their so called ‘Christian’ cult mindset upon you. To sexual street harassment by illiterate, dirty and nasty Black males at the Staples on Snowden River Parkway, the park at Dasher Green, Columbia Mall, the red line going into The District of Columbia metro, restaurants in Linthicum. Black Christian men and women are both guilty of self destructive, street harassment and other criminal behavior.

Beyond this, how many times has a Black man raped his stepchild, killed his child and “baby’s mother”, murdered a Black woman when she had enough sense to move on and find a decent guy and that Black male killed him as well? Black males who engaged in drive-by shootings, threaten their communities if they disclose criminal activity (remember the gang members that bombed an entire family who reported drug activity in her BALTIMORE neighborhood?) Fired weapons killing innocent Black children, Black women in which stray bullets killed innocent Black children in their home to get initiated in a gang, to ‘settle beef,’ gain territory for more drug dealing, Black families who live in constant fear that they cannot walk down the street in their own neighborhoods for fear that a BLACK man will “gun them down” , sexually assault, street harass or rob them?

The initial core protestors believe that only Black ‘Christian’ criminal lives matter not Blacks who are hard working, educated law abiding, and decent–especially of you are a Sunni Muslim–if you display good quality and character these same ‘Christian’ Blacks will refer to you as a ‘sell-out.’ They truly do not know what the word means because they ‘sell out’ their communities everyday by making them unsafe and uninhabitable due to their own Black ‘Christian’ behavior. So if there was ever any true plan to destroy Black communities by some unseen cabal then the sell-outs are the inner city, ignorant Blacks who do so rendering the former with clean hands.

‘Black lives matter’? Think about that expression Black male the next time you intend to harm or make a Black woman unsafe through your conduct of street harassment.

To the Black ‘Christian’ obnoxious women harassers who think everyone should emulate you as if your incessant need to wear weaves, fight over sneakers, force yourself into people’s personal space and disrespect, roll your eyes and talk about strangers’ clothes, “jump” lines in retail stores in an effort to instigate arguments and fights that fuel your bestial, aggressive tendencies, to your unnecessary, inciteable “beat down” stare to total strangers who mind their business but because they are covered Sunni Muslims who actually practice their religious beliefs perhaps you should reflect on why many strangers avoid your kind in public and would not want to dare emulate you. You are no better than those same Black males described above.

Huffington Post article: When Black Women Die From Street Harassment

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6014092
WHEN BLACK WOMEN DIE FROM STREET HARASSMENT
Who cries when black women die?
October 20, 2014

I’m not asking that as some type of rhetorical, poetic question, meant to move you toward ferocious finger snaps. I want to know. Who cries when black women die?

Further, who cries when black women are killed?

Mary Spears was killed. The man who killed her did so because she refused to give him her phone number. She told him “I have a man I can’t talk to you,” and yet he persisted. Rather than respect her wishes to be left alone, he shot her.

Who cries when black women die from street harassment? 

I really do need an answer. Because Mary Spears’s right to move about freely in the world was denied to her, her life taken from her, and there are no marches. No one has broken out the bullhorns or their comfortable sneakers. There are no widespread calls to protect the autonomy of black women and their bodies. The community leaders haven’t deemed this unacceptable and a fate no one should ever face simply because they reject a man’s advances.

No, when black women die from that toxic mix of violent misogyny, male entitlement, and hypermasculine posturing, there is no movement to be born. There are condolences to be offered and “unfortunate”s to be uttered, but no tears to be cried. There is no anger that propels action.

You’ve read this piece before. You’ve read it a dozen times over. I’ve written it before. I could have written it a dozen times over. It’s the piece where someone complains about how little outrage there is surrounding something which deeply affects them, and then the reader is left to wonder, “Well, if it means that much to you, what are YOU doing about it?” You may have written that piece before. And we keep writing them because I don’t think any of us are quite sure what to do.

Where black women are concerned, we aren’t just talking about mounting the evils of misogyny, or even racism. We compete with the sacrifices black women make for their community.

I understand that there’s an impulse to not make black men the faces of street harassment, given all of the ideas that already exist around black male hypersexuality, as well as the disproportionate amount of police violence that black men face as the result of the constant criminalization of behaviors associated with black men. But black women have been allowed to suffer too much for the protection of black men. They have paid with their lives.

And here I am, writing another blog post wondering why no one seems to care.

Street harassment is vile. It makes women feel unsafe in public. But when black women die because we have failed to teach boys and men to keep their thoughts and hands to themselves, that they are not entitled to the sexual attention of any and every woman, or that their attempts at proving their masculinity through verbal and physical assaults on women are failures, the concern fades before it has a chance to actually surface. Black women are expected to keep sacrificing.

Who cries when black women die? Nobody. No damn body.

Mychal Denzel Smith is a Knobler Fellow at The Nation Institute.