Thanks to Jelani Cobb, who sent this to me:
Dear Friends:
I am one of the contributors to the anthology Be A Father to Your Child, which focuses on encouraging healthy fatherhood development in the black community. We felt it necessary to issue the following statement and petition in response to the recent verdict in R. Kelly’s child pornography trial.
Please read and, if you agree, sign and forward this to your networks.
Sincerely,
Jelani Cobb
Statement of Black Men Against the Exploitation of Black Women
Six years have gone by since we first heard the allegations that R. Kelly had filmed himself having sex with an underage girl. During that time we have seen the videotape being hawked on street corners in Black communities, as if the dehumanization of one of our own was not at stake. We have seen entertainers rally around him and watched his career reach new heights despite the grave possibility that he had molested and urinated on a 13-year old girl. We saw African Americans purchase millions of his records despite the long history of such charges swirling around the singer. Worst of all, we have witnessed the sad vision of Black people cheering his acquittal with a fervor usually reserved for community heroes and shaken our heads at the stunning lack of outrage over the verdict in the broader Black community.
Over these years, justice has been delayed and it has been denied. Perhaps a jury can accept R. Kelly’s absurd defense and find “reasonable doubt” despite the fact that the film was shot in his home and featured a man who was identical to him. Perhaps they doubted that the young woman in the courtroom was, in fact, the same person featured in the ten year old video. But there is no doubt about this: some young Black woman was filmed being degraded and exploited by a much older Black man, some daughter of our community was left unprotected, and somewhere another Black woman is being molested, abused or raped and our callous handling of this case will make it that much more difficult for her to come forward and be believed. And each of us is responsible for it.
We have proudly seen the community take to the streets in defense of Black men who have been the victims of police violence or racist attacks, but that righteous outrage only highlights the silence surrounding this verdict.
We believe that our judgment has been clouded by celebrity-worship; we believe that we are a community in crisis and that our addiction to sexism has reached such an extreme that many of us cannot even recognize child molestation when we see it.
We recognize the absolute necessity for Black men to speak in a single, unified voice and state something that should be absolutely obvious: that the women of our community are full human beings, that we cannot and will not tolerate the poisonous hatred of women that has already damaged our families, relationships and culture.
We believe that our daughters are precious and they deserve our protection. We believe that Black men must take responsibility for our contributions to this terrible state of affairs and make an effort to change our lives and our communities.
This is about more than R. Kelly’s claims to innocence. It is about our survival as a community. Until we believe that our daughters, sisters, mothers, wives and friends are worthy of justice, until we believe that rape, domestic violence and the casual sexism that permeates our culture are absolutely unacceptable, until we recognize that the first priority of any community is the protection of its young, we will remain in this tragic dead-end.
We ask that you:
o Sign your name if you are a Black male who supports this statement:
http://www.petitiononline.com/rkelly/petition.html
o Forward this statement to your entire network and ask other Black males to sign as well
o Make a personal pledge to never support R. Kelly again in any form or fashion, unless he publicly apologizes for his behavior and gets help for his long-standing sexual conduct, in his private life and in his music
o Make a commitment in your own life to never to hit, beat, molest, rape, or exploit Black females in any way and, if you have, to take ownership for your behavior, seek emotional and spiritual help, and, over time, become a voice against all forms of Black female exploitation
o Challenge other Black males, no matter their age, class or educational background, or status in life, if they engage in behavior and language that is exploitative and or disrespectful to Black females in any way. If you say nothing, you become just as guilty.
o Learn to listen to the voices, concerns, needs, criticisms, and challenges of Black females, because they are our equals, and because in listening we will learn a new and different kind of Black manhood
We support the work of scholars, activists and organizations that are helping to redefine Black manhood in healthy ways. Additional resources are listed below.
Books:
Who’s Gonna Take the Weight, Kevin Powell
New Black Man, Mark Anthony Neal
Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot, Pearl Cleage
Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality, Rudolph Byrd and Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Films:
I Am A Man: Black Masculinity in America, by Byron Hurt
Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, by Byron Hurt
NO! The Rape Documentary, by Aishah Simmons
Organizations
The 2025 Campaign: www.2025bmb.org
Men Stopping Violence: www.menstoppingviolence.org
Comment(s)
This man was found not quilty and now you want to make petitions against him..for what exactly?
So now you don’t want us to buy his music?Why?So we should believe your verdict over the jury one?
Sorry,i don’t support your views.This is condemnation of another human being.Sorry!
Comment(s)
the day i read this post, i had watched an hbo documentary about film director roman polanski. in the 1970’s he too had been arrested for the statutory rape of a 13 year old girl he had been taking pictures of for, i believe, vogue magazine. he had also been charged with giving her alcohol and drugs and sodomizing her. the documentary point of view was how polanski had been wronged by the judicial system and a judge that was hell bent on making an example out of a celebrity rather than following the law. the question is was “the law”? purely because of his celebrity, polanski was allowed to plead to lesser charges hoping he would eventually get some kind of suspended sentence. had things gone his way he would have served virtually no time for his crime. to my understanding he never admitted to any wrong doing making the case that she consented to sex. she was a thirteen year old child!!! her consent didn’t make it legal nor moral!!! the film constantly makes the case of polanski being this artistic genuis with extreame bad luck (parents in concentration camps during wwII, wife being brutally murdered by charles manson’s croonies, and the sexually active, pill popping, alcohol swigging thirteen year old who accused him of rape). he is a genius who was “unfairly forced” to flee this country because of its “biased treatment of artists.” despite this travesty, he never let the bastards get him down and continued to go on and realize his artistic visions by continuing to make movies. he and his work were even recognized by the academy of motion pictures when they honored him with the best picture and director award for the film, the pianist.
flash forward to the 21st century and r. kelly . . . how ironic that i watch this hbo documentary is the same day i find out about kelly being found guilty (did it even make the mainstream news? that is very telling as well if it didn’t; “who cares about some black, r&b hoochie being molested and some r&b guy getting off for it?”) at one time kelly was being (rightly so) demonized for his crime but by the time is next album dropped, he too was being hailed as an “artistic genius who might have done something fucked up but makes a slamming music.” i’ve seriously heard people say as much, and i’m not talking about folks out on the street or just brothers too. some of the same talking heads that came out against him when the allegations came out were now pumping their fist for his music as if the two weren’t related at all. people have been actually willing to give him a slide just because they like “step in the man of love!” just because he made some ridiculous record about getting closer to God!!! just because the man makes good music he should get a pass. “these girls are fast. these girls are grown. he didn’t do anything that bad. he needs help. he shouldn’t go to jail for something like that.” yeah right, picture those same people that made these sound bites saying this if someone had sex with a 13 year old they knew, peed on her, and video taped the whole thing for prosperity.
now, i’m one of those people who looks at folks in the limelightand in gerneral holistically. you could be making john coltrane, stevie wonder, the police, nirvana type crazy, slamming, fly music, but if you’ve got some morally incorrect antics going on, i will not support you, PERIOD!!!! and i will go on a personal crusade to make sure others will do the same or at least know how i feel. why do we as a public constantly let celebrities get away with bad behavior and then even “big-up them” for going through adversity? i say we do have to be proactive on a grassroots levels with the folks we know – men, women, and children! but we also have to turn off a lot of this mainstream nonsense and not support it. when the artist and the record companies feel it in their pockets then the changes will come. we have the power!
and to the person who wrote before me “this man was found not guilty . . .” well, there are too many innocent people in prisons right now (as even one is too many) who were found guilty by a jury of their peers and quite a few guilty people who have walked the streets as free people. just check the streets of paris for mr. polanski.