Is Everything a Setup?
Above is a clip from the 2005 Boondocks episode the Trial of R.Kelly
The awareness that Black men have been and are falsely accused of crimes is a narrative black people know all too well. False accusations in the context of the sexual assault or harassment of white women have led to not only the incarceration of innocent black men but has also lead to the death of black men such as Emmit Till and more recently the incarceration of Brian Banks. More recently, conversations about mass incarceration and police brutality have become a part of famous activist campaigns such as the Black Lives Matter movement, and the dialogue surrounding it is happening outside of black households and in front of the public eye due to social media and a twenty-four-hour news cycle. However, there is a distinct difference between the women that falsely accused Emmit Till and Brian Banks and Robert Kelly's victims as well as the dialogue around how the justice system fails black men. The women who made those false accusations were White women while Robert's victims were Black girls as young as twelve, and there was a significant amount of evidence proving that he was guilty of his crimes. However, not only was Kelly found not guilty in the infamous trial, but his career continued to "fly."
After Surviving R. Kelly was aired on lifetime, Chance the Rapper released a statement saying that working with Kelly in 2015 was a mistake acknowledging that we are conditioned to be hypersensitive to the oppression of Black men even though Black women are significantly more oppressed. That he originally didn't care and much of the public failed to care or focus on Kelly's crimes due to the fact that his victims were black girls and not white ones.
“We’re programmed to really be hypersensitive to black male oppression. But black woman are exponentially (a) higher oppressed and violated group of people just in comparison to the whole world,” he says. “Maybe I didn’t care because I didn’t value the accusers’ stories because they were black women. Usually, n---as that get in trouble for s--- like this on their magnitude of celebrity, it’s light-skinned women or white women. That’s when it’s a big story. I’ve never really seen any pictures of R. Kelly’s accusers.” - Chance the Rapper
Lady Gaga, who chose not to be a part of the docuseries, took her collaboration with Kelly in 2013 off of streaming services. However, allegations against Robert have been public knowledge since his 1994 marriage to a teenage Aaliyah and 2002 sex tape with a teenage girl. If Gaga cared so much about his victims, she would have never worked with the singer in the first place. Celebrities speaking out against Kelly because of the docuseries they refused to be a part of was a trending topic is another form of exploitation of both Kelly's victims, survivors, and the 'Me Too' movement as a whole.
If R. Kelly's victims looked different would people have continued to dismiss his crimes against children for so long? Would Black people have defended him in the same way?
According to research done by Black Women's Blueprint, 60% of black women surveyed had been sexually assaulted by black men before they turned eighteen. Sex crimes against Black women are and have been an epidemic in this country since we entered it. It's now time to allow Black women to stand as survivors and acknowledge the crimes committed against them in the same way we support white female celebrities that grace covers as the stars of the 'Me Too' movement. It is time to stop erasing Black women from movements created for them and by them because Black women are the people who experience these atrocities the most. It is also time to recognize that not every Black man accused of sexual assault is a Brian Banks, and not every Black male celebrity indicted for a crime is innocent or set up. It is time to hold our "heroes" and our "icons" accountable within our community because their actions cause more pain than their art causes joy.
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