Women Not to Blame for Dress

Note: This is a perspective that I submitted to The Hilltop, Howard University's student newspaper. I just submitted it today, so it has yet to be published.

In his column "Unphiltered," Phil Lucas wrote his response to comments that were made on Allhiphop.com. There, Brothers were anticipating with glee the number of “freaks and hoes” that would be at our school’s homecoming celebrations. Initially offended by these comments, Brother Lucas still felt the need to caution Sisters to dress appropriately. Also, he warned the entire Howard community to be selective with their sexual endeavors in order to preserve individuals’ reputations. Offenders should be expelled (Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either.) because this would deter folks from tarnishing Howard’s reputation as a premiere HBCU.

I do not submit this perspective in order to demonize Brother Lucas. In fact, his view is the mainstream, dominant one that many folks may agree with. I wish to only offer an alternative perspective and to demonstrate the extent to which his comments were damaging to our community.

With that said, indulge me if you will.

The ideological framework Brother Lucas is operating within is the same of rapists who believe that if a girl was being provocative or wearing certain types of clothes, then she “was asking for it.” A female’s choice of dress is no indicator of her sexual happenings, expectations, or allowances.

If a woman walks outside her house butt naked, no man has the right to touch her or to yell obscenities. However, we all know that if a woman walks outside in sweat pants and a winter coat she runs the risk of sexual assault.

In fact, just being a woman is enough to get you sexually assaulted in this sexist society.

Nonetheless, we understand that wearing less clothes or dressing provocatively increases the risk of sexual assault. Not that long ago, drinking out of a white water fountain in the South could have gotten you lynched. Also, let us not forget that sitting under a “white” tree in Jena, Louisiana can have major repercussions in America’s injustice system.

And one need not drink from a white water fountain or sit under a “white” tree because just being black is enough to get you discriminated against in this white-supremacist society.

The truth is that we all learn to police our actions living within a white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Much in the same way that a woman knows not to walk outside wearing nothing because she could possibly be raped, blacks knew we could get lynched if we chose to drink from the white water fountain. With this understanding, it is clear that women who dress provocatively are not the problem; the problem is the system of oppression that allows injustice to occur based upon something as frivolous as their choice of dress.

It is absurd to criticize women for dressing provocatively (Who would criticize Rosa Parks for remaining seated on the bus?). Now, this is not to say that all Howard females who choose to dress provocatively have some type of radical feminist mission. But the point still stands that no one who transgresses against oppression – whether consciously or subconsciously - should be reprimanded.

At best, we can say that women who dress provocatively are not taking the necessary precautions to avoid harm. But it does not follow, by any stretch of the imagination, that brothers on Allhiphop.com are justified by calling them “freaks and hoes” and that females’ dress should be checked in order to maintain the reputation of Howard University.

If our reputation depends on whether or not female students choose to dress provocatively, it is a reputation not worth having. Our worth as an institution must transcend the whims of a sexist, patriarchal order if we are to be worth anything at all.

Brother Lucas’s column was so disappointing to me because it fits so well within the paradigm of patriarchy and sexist oppression that feminist movement has been fighting against since its inception. As black men, we have a responsibility to stand in solidarity with our sisters. Instead of asking black women to alter their dress, we should be focusing our efforts on educating men on the negative impact of their sexist language, behaviors, and attitudes.

Response to Jena 6 Requires Revolutionary Vision

Note: I originally wrote this piece for the "Hilltop," Howard University's student newspaper. It appeared in the "Perspectives" section on August 29, 2007; it assumes a general knowledge of the "Jena 6" situaiton in Louisiana.

The case of the Jena 6 in Louisiana proves that white-supremacy is alive and well in this country; it has further highlighted the fact that we live in a fundamentally racist society. It seems as if it takes an event such as this about every two to three years to keep us vigilant and renewed in Black liberation struggle. Much like the assassination of Sean Bell and the genocide in New Orleans, the modern-day lynching of the Jena 6 has brought a much needed conversation about white-privilege and the horrors of being Black in this country back into the mainstream. But the socio-political implications of these events transcend the individuals who compose them.
For instance, as we mourn the brutal death of Sean Bell, we must recognize the hundreds of Black and Brown folks before him who have fallen victim at the hands of state violence. Grassroots organizations - like the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in Brooklyn, for example - sought justice for the Bell family while incorporating a virulent critique of police brutality.

Similarly, the genocide in New Orleans is not specific to the Gulf Coast . Folks realize that what happened in New Orleans is indicative of a larger historical problem in this country: the continued devaluation of the lives and communities of poor people of color. This is evidenced in what has been termed “Hurricane Columbia” by those who oppose Columbia University ’s expansion into the West Manhattanville neighborhood of New York City , an imperialist expansion that would displace hundreds and destroy a community.

We must enter the struggle for justice for the Jena 6 with the same revolutionary vision. The situation in Jena is not just about the young Black men being unjustifiably thrown into the prison industrial complex for the better part of their lives. This is about a country and an (in)justice system in which the lives of Black and Brown folks are of little importance.

We must take into account the individual Brothers who are being affected by these racist policies; we will organize and we will fight for our Brothers in solidarity. But with this, we must keep our sights fixed on revolutionary goals.

We must strategically incorporate a critique of the prison industrial complex. Our folks disproportionately occupy America ’s prisons. The government invests in our confinement: more money is spent on building prisons than funding inner-city school systems.

We must not shy away from a critique of capitalism. Poor people, who lack the financial power to wield influence and provide themselves adequate defense, tend to fall within the cracks of the prison industrial complex more quickly than their affluent counterparts. Even though the Jena 6 show no particular signs of opulence, we must remember and struggle in the memory of our Brothers and Sisters who do not have the privilege of a national campaign for their freedom and who remain nameless behind the bars of a cell. And what about the violent masculinity that gave rise to this incident in the first place. If the young men on both sides of the conflict had been divested of a pestilential masculinity that views violence as a problem solving method, the fangs of white-supremacy – as far as this situation is concerned - would have left the young Black men unscathed. It is unfortunate that we as young Black men grow up in a culture that socializes us to pursue violent confrontation to affirm our masculinity.

I have faith that we, the students of Howard University, will continue to fight for justice for the Jena 6. But as we rally, raise funds, and travel to Louisiana to organize, let us retain a revolutionary vision of justice and liberation that dismantles a white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal order that allowed these events to unfold in the first place.