There must have been something floating through this corner of the Universe.
I said most of what I had to say on this in Twitter and YouTube. I just thought I’d weigh in since I did make that post about people’s expectations around protecting African women and femmes, and as I predicted, everyone was shocked.
I might have felt more sympathy for Chris had he not been so shocked.
Maybe living in Israel I’m used to people expecting to have to throw down when they say certain things on or off stage or even in a government setting. Talk shit, get hit is the standard this side of the pond. Some may call it toxic masculinity, but women and femmes are expected to throw down as well. It is viewed as particularly feminine when this happens.
So people in the U.S. can go back and forth about respectability, and this is important. It’s actually something that affects the people who are not millionaires. Aesthetics and sane choices; another aspect of this that is important to the people. Now that this thing has happened, we should be moving on to important topics like this. Staying focused on who was morally right or wrong as opposed to what this means to the people though, that’s a rabbit hole.
Celebrities in general, being human and rich enough to be bored, are generally into some weird, shady stuff. I am saying this as someone who y’all know to be a bit of a freak themself. They can be into all sorts, and I don’t have the luxury of “kill the author” in this brain. Some things may not be, but some things are connected to who a person is, and though an incident can be dramatic and iconic, it usually plays out the way it does because the person who did it is them.
End of the day that was two rich guys, one who felt the privilege of saying whatever to and about whoever because he was on a stage and had money, and another who, though taking a big risk due to his color, at least has the male privilege of “fuck it”. He wasn’t risking himself physically or that much legally because he has so much more money than, well, say their names is a good sentiment, but I’m not dragging them into this. Y’all get my point.
Yay for protecting Black women. Hopefully folks will be less shocked in the future when African Americans behave like American Africans. Still, these are two rich men with beef. Honestly the new age vs. realness beef in the African and diaspora spiritual community is more pressing to keep a play by play eye on right now. To me.
But still, dudes, I have to be careful when even I am in masc mode. Keep people’s wives’ name out of your mouth unless you are ready to scrap. I think LaySpeech Sankofa had the best take on this:
Folks are just not used to seeing this, but over here, even in Israel, even with all the racism we have to deal with here, one’s wife being African has nothing to do with protecting or not protecting. That’s one’s wife. By extension, those of us with even a tiny bit of warrior in us extend this protectiveness to our femme friends regardless of their genital status. One just protects one’s people. That’s just the default of being a person.
Yes, personhood means something different outside the U.S. That gap is closing, as it should, especially for African and/or Indigenous Maizelanders.
