Black Women Are Heroic; They Aren't Superheroes
Patriarchy has cultivated a trope of the “strong Black woman” that’s negligent of their humanity and leads us to continuously fail them.
2020 has been a revelatory time of reckoning and struggle social progression. Cultural norms are being challenged on a daily basis. But sadly, some things don’t change — like mistreatment and disregard for Black women’s humanity. Malcolm X famously professed that “the Black woman is the most unprotected person in America.” 40 years later, white supremacy and patriarchy make that as true ever.
Some of the world’s most dynamic women have been victims of this negligence on public stages this summer. Many men are prone to deny their misogyny by defensively extolling how much they love Black women — but they haven’t shown it lately.
So often that love is conditional and contingent upon control, sexual gratification, or proximity. They affirm their mothers, close loved ones, and universally revered historical figures as examples of “strong Black women.”
Mothers, or other matriarchal figures, become most boy’s framework for what a “strong Black woman” is. That conception of strength is predicated on a perception of resilience, indestructibility, limitless grace, and other qualities boys are conditioned to ascribe to motherhood.
But that faux-reverence cultivates a trope of the “Strong Black woman” that’s negligent of the full scope of womanhood. There’s no challenge to stretch our emotional capacity. It ignores the very human need to cope with the stress and trauma of systemic oppression. It doesn’t leave space for us to be empathetic, or to be givers, only takers. It permeates our platonic and romantic relationships and becomes the fundamental basis for our perception of women. It’s time to admit that under patriarchy, our perception of upliftment is a weight on women.
That negligence is why 35-year-old J. Cole asked Noname to teach him social theory “like a child.” It’s why Talib Kweli harassed Maya Moody for over three weeks and no prominent men publicly defended her. It’s why instead of holding grace for Megan Thee Stallion, grown men are assuming her health and joking about her LA shooting.
Megan harkened to Malcolm X’s quote on Twitter, noting that “Black women are so unprotected & we hold so many things in to protect the feelings of others w/o considering our own.” Earlier this month, she was shot in an incident that also involved Toronto artist Tory Lanez. It’s still unclear exactly what happened, but Megan made an Instagram post clarifying that “she suffered gunshot wounds, as a result of a crime that was committed against me and done with the intention to physically harm me.”
Despite admitting that someone tried to shoot her, and noting that she was recovering from a “traumatic night,” so much of the social media reaction consisted of childish jokes lampooning the shooting. 50 Cent chimed in with a meme that likened Megan to Ricky being shot (by Tory) in Boyz N The Hood. Even Phonte, respected as a purveyor of “grown man rap,” couldn’t resist joking about the 25-year-old’s shooting. Misogyny coalesced with our collective trivialization of gun violence and led so many people to simply chalk the moment up to Cam’ron’s famous Paid In Full assertion that, “niggas get shot every day.”
It was Cam’ron who was most flagrant toward Megan, posting a transphobic joke that “Tory saw that dick and started shootn.” It wasn’t enough that he had no empathy for her, he used the moment to harken to insensitive jokes that have frequently been made about Megan because of her physical strength and stature. Not only is the joke insensitive to transgender people, but it also ties into racist tropes about Black people as subhuman oddities because of their physical stature. The air of humor is what enabled reality star Draya and model Chrissy Teigen’s insensitive jokes about Megan.
Hip-hop consumers have spent the past several years getting acquainted with Megan’s on mic bravado. She exudes confidence and resilience, especially in the way that she continued her career — and college education — after the death of her mother. She radiates a relatable brand of strength that has made her a champion for like-minded empowered women. But instead of expressing collective support to aid in her re-assuming her power when she’s ready, we manipulated it as the basis to assume that she’ll have the strength to overcome her shooting — which made it, and her, OK to joke about. We failed her.
Noname tweeted about the circumstance, noting that she was “praying for megan and all black womxn globally. watching black men joke about her shooting as a call to action to harm more black women hurts in a way im not smart enough to articulate.” Ironically, it was Noname’s intelligence that made her a target of a similar dynamic earlier this summer.
J. Cole released a song called “Snow On Tha Bluff” that was aimed at her. The song essentially tone-policed Noname’s at-times unflinching Twitter presence, and asked her to teach him “like a child” about Black liberation. Cole’s boyish foray was apparently meant as an olive branch toward allegiance. But true solidarity would have been Cole having the good sense to realize that his approach — and timing — was way off.
Days before the song’s release, 19-year-old Florida activist Oluwatoyin Salau was found dead days after tweeting out that she had been sexually assaulted. She sought help publicly, but no one was there for her. Her death was heartbreaking for many Black women who saw their own disregard through her plight. If Cole didn’t know about Salau’s death, that reality is a damning indictment of his social agency. If he did know, it’s damning that he decided to release a song demanding something of a woman who probably needed support at the time.
Cole’s attempt to frame himself as a child while seeking to be coddled by her was out of bounds. Noname is undoubtedly a brave, intelligent, well-read woman. But that doesn’t give Cole access to her on his terms — even if he calls her “queen.” Perhaps he made the track out of reverence for her mind, but part of respect is being respectful. His approach undermined her humanity and contributed to an “Angry Black woman” trope. It’s no wonder she likened him to “a demon on my shoulder, it's lookin' like patriarchy” on “Song 33.”
Talib Kweli was one of the men who defended “Snow On Tha Bluff.” Thankfully, as far as we know, no one opposing him got harassed in the dustup. Talib’s always-bustling Twitter account is currently inactive after three weeks of attacking Twitter user Maya Moody behind a tweet he was wrong about in the first place. Her @MoneyMaya Twitter account replied to a tweet of rappers with Black wives noting that “almost all” of the men had light-skinned wives. Kweli, who searched for the tweet that didn’t tag him, then went on a rampage against Maya under the guise of protecting his wife. The tweet never actually applied to him, as it also referenced Papoose, whose wife Remy Ma isn’t who anyone would consider light-skinned.
But regardless of his misinterpretation, he dug through her old tweets and screenshotted them on his IG page, then proceeded to tweet about her for 16 days, while projecting that the Black women who had defended Maya in the dustup were “deplorable hateful anti-black anti-women Monsters” in a now-nonexistent tweet.
After days of being harassed by Kweli, Maya posted that she and her family had been doxxed and harassed, and alleged that Kweli has numerous troll accounts that he either controls or sends after his targets of ire. She posted screenshots of someone posting her address in the comments section of an Instagram post, and another person “joking” about sex trafficking.
Despite her evidence that Kweli had pushed his harassment beyond the bounds of Twitter and she felt threatened, not a single prominent figure in “the culture” came to her defense. Talib didn’t even address Maya’s traumatic admission in his lengthy IG Live session, only mentioning that he was doxxed. If it weren’t for Black women rallying around her, would we even realize this happened? Has he done this before to other women?
Maya’s lack of support was a quintessential example of neglect. Black women are the backbone of Twitter. So many people and brands visit the accounts of Twitter’s most prominent Black women to laugh, learn and “borrow” their theory and vernacular. They display an admirable intellectual tenacity for holding wrongdoers accountable for their misdeeds. In short, they will drag anyone to shame — and maybe deactivation. So when one hears that Talib was arguing with Black women on Twitter, perhaps they thought the playing field was equal — except it wasn’t. Maya expressed that she believes Kweli mobilized a slew of accounts to come at her and threaten real-world harm that transcends Twitter.
We often see Black woman extol variations of “we got us” on Twitter. And while that’s true, that doesn’t mean Black men can’t step up for support when need be. That’s only the popular sentiment because of the kind of neglect so many of us displayed during Kweli’s tweetstorm. The power to drag someone on Twitter doesn’t transcend offline, where physical harm and harassment are real threats to women’s wellbeing. Once Kweli was accused of weaponizing his power and resources to threaten offline harm, someone should have stepped up publicly.
Kweli feigned respect for Black women as the basis to harass Maya and many other Black women, representing another twisted example of “uplifting” that only ended up weighing down on women. If he had true respect for Black women’s humanity, he would have simply recognized that Maya no longer wanted to interact and left her alone. And if care for Black women was as much of a priority as empty “protect Black women” tweets, more prominent people would have realized that the dustup had transcended into trauma.
Kweli continues to nestle inside a victim complex, hiding his narcissism behind pro-Blackness in sickening fashion. It’s unclear if he voluntarily deactivated his account, or whether he was suspended. But he announced that he’s shifting the bulk of his online presence to Patreon, attempting to capitalize on his harassment. He named his new album Cultural Currency, which is ironic: he’s bankrupt after three weeks of verbal abuse.
The past several months have shown us numerous prominent examples of Black women being disrespected in different forms. Noname, Megan Thee Stallion, and the women of Black Twitter project variant kinds of strength. As Black men take their resilience for granted, we may think that our jokes are in good fun, and our requests to be kept “up to speed” are noble. We may truly believe that our defense of our wives — at the expense of other Black women — is proper advocacy. But that’s male hubris that doesn’t leave space for sensitivity to their plight. If it weren’t for Black women, every woman mentioned in this piece would feel attacked and alone with trauma instead of supported. That’s a failure.
Our perception of womanhood is crafted by a system that subsists on the subjugation of women and the priority of our emotions; it’s inherently faulty. We need to work to uproot patriarchy, which will help us relinquish its pathology and realize that so much of women's strength is in spite of us.
This is a free newsletter. Those who wish to support can contribute here:
Venmo: Andre-Gee
Thank u.
A couple of questions, as always:
1 - could the next post focus on women rappers who really small time? I feel we need to use our platforms to uplift more black women, and move away from fakes and snakes like these guys.
2 - Phonte joined in the jokes!???
3 - who benefits from black women rappers rn? Cuz outside of the psychic joy they give black women, we still need to see all that music profit going to these women, and not their labels and managers.
4 - Thoughts on Angel Haze?