By: ~ TVP Jones

Maybe I'll post this as a blog. Felt it necessary to weigh in, although I know several sisters and brothers have done a better job of doing so.

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So the topic of street harassment has gone viral YEARS after many sisters have been organizing around it on and offline. The video that I'm sure many of you have seen isn't the strongest example, but it is an example. It has it's problems, as all expressions of activism do. The response to it has issues as well, which are indicative of whose voices our society values when a statement is made. A black woman, Jessica Williams, made a similar video on a much larger platform (The Daily Show) that was significantly more equitable. But there were crickets.

I know women who have written articles for Essence, Ebony, The Root, been on panels, and advocated for an end to this form of rape culture WHILE organizing marches for Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown, or while making films to get Ted Wafer arrested for murdering Renisha McBride.

Unfortunately, a lot of brothers in the community have yet again made it their priority to belittle, dismiss, discount, or attempt to silence these stories, to end this discussion. Often this is done under the pretense that black feminists aren't standing against police brutality. Which is counterintuitive, because black women, whether they identify publicly as feminists or not, have been the primary conduit through which social justice organizing has remained on point and consistent since there was any movement to speak of in this country.

Somehow, it is necessary in our community for black women to understand and empathize with black men when our humanity is diminished by stop and frisk, mass incarceration, police brutality, and the myriad forms of institutionalized racism we endure. Black men often empathize to a lesser degree when a black woman faces those very same forms of oppression (see the attention given to any black man killed by the police, and contrast it to the murders of Ayanna Jones and Renisha McBride).

When black women discuss their concerns about safety, how they feel abandoned by us despite their desire to protect us, feel disrespected by the elements of hip-hop we often champion publicly, and when we dismiss their shared experience of street harassment, or any other type of rape culture, we often attack them in response. There is a word for that . Patriarchy. It has many subsets. Sexism is one of them.

Now, some of my leftist and nationalist brothers may get incensed at the idea that we as black men benefit from any system of privilege in America. That reminds me of Bill O'Reily's outrage at the mention of white privilege on the John Stewart show, and failure to identify with it because he grew up working class, and didn't have the same kind of access as wealthy whites.

These points are made out of brotherhood and love. We need to be aware of what we're doing to our women, and how it affects them. They fight for us. They have since we were on plantations picking cotton or cane or coal from can't see in the mornin' till can't see at night. They healed our wounds when we got whipped. They organized when we got lynched. They marched alongside us. They helped us get our shit together when it wasn't. They help us finish school, find jobs, feed families, and raise them. And so much more. They fight for us. And when we are asked to fight for them, many of us turn a cold shoulder and dismiss them because WE feel attacked.

I'm not on a high horse here. Trust, I've made my missteps as a black man toward black women, and TRUST, I've been checked HARD for them. I've also been checked for the missteps of others, and had to learn to listen, and not take it personally. Every now and then, I still fuck up. Just like my white friends who are pretty aware of how they benefit from racism in America fuck up some times too. Part of being human.

Why am I so invested in ending street harassment, patriarchy, and sexism? I'm a son, a cousin, a "brother" (only child y'all), a boyfriend, a teacher, an uncle, a baba, and one day will be a father. I have cousins who are like my little sisters who have been sexually assaulted. My mother told me stories of how she was catcalled as a pre-teen and as a teenager in Hempstead. My cousins are catcalled and street harassed daily. If only this conversation were as personal to more of us, if we could listen with that kind of empathy. I wish my cousins had the kind of courage to step forward and find communal healing in sharing their experiences the way that Jamilah Lemieux, Feminista Jones, Sydnie Mosley, Ekere Tallie, and so many others have.

While thinking of the blacklash our women face while combating patriarchy/sexism in our community, I think about something that Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie shared with me. She introduced me to a quote from the late Amiri Baraka: "All the black women in those militant black organizations deserve the highest praise. Not only did they stand with us shoulder to shoulder against black people's enemies, they also had to go toe to toe with us, battling day after day against our insufferable male chauvinism."

We need to do better, hold ourselves accountable, and not recoil when checked. If we seriously want to improve our people, our condition, we gotta listen and change. Sure, there is plenty of work to do. There are many issues at hand, many battles to fight. But we're a polyrhythmic people, so we're capable of being aware and active on multiple fronts.

"You have to criticize the errors you've made because that's the only way you can break them." - Amiri Baraka.