When Race Is Not Enough
In the New York Magazine article rocketing around Twitter and the interwebs, the story of “Diego” and his social ostracism for non-consensually sharing nude photographs of his minor-aged girlfriend (a crime) includes multiple references to other boys, responsible for other events, meeting their own reckoning for their actions. Since I’m Black, I didn’t fail to notice how often the white woman author of the essay mentioned race for these boys — and how often it was erased for the girls they hurt.
Over and over again, there were nods to the violence initiated against Black men and boys in particular as an extension of the white supremacist history of false accusations, including invoking the Exonerated 5 (!), but little to no interrogation if these new experiences map onto these old transgressions. Are the accusers white girls? Are they claiming non-consensual exploitation as a cover for voluntary affairs? As a way to exercise white power? As a means of making themselves victims rather than aggressors? Is what they’re contending a violation of norms, or a violation of boundaries? And are they even white?
The author is happy to mention race when the boys are asked for accountability (or, in describing the ethereal beauty of Diego’s ex-girlfriend), happy to reflect on our eager criminalization of Blackness, but never tells us if the girls slot easily into the other side of the story. It is telling that a brown girl initiates the first walkout, and it is her work on tackling systemic failure that’s usurped by individualistic finger pointing as the whisper network goes public. We hear her disappointment in having her voice co-opted by others, but nothing about the harm perpetrated against her, nor why her first instinct was to speak in solidarity with other girls and femmes. The story isn’t about her, and so her motivations and goals are made invisible. If we could see what she wanted, would the story change?
Probably. It would be harder to sympathize with a rightly earned backlash when the story centers on a victim who isn’t given all the slack of “boys will be boys” nor the safety of being a precious commodity. We could have understood so much more about this high school environment if we asked what it was like to navigate a system that was never built to acknowledge hurt instead of mourning the loss of easy absolution.
It’s one of the inevitabilities of being a Black woman that you will be forgotten. Womanhood is white; Blackness is cishet male. We’re aberrations, deviations, outside of the regular scope. We are invisible because neither Blackness nor womanhood has a lens to see us. The author was no exception, even as she tried to overcome her biases.
Because Black women have always suffered in silence. We too are subjected to patriarchy and abuse, and we too wish we could hold the perpetrators responsible. We whisper among ourselves; we comfort and console behind closed doors. We have been exploited too. But there is no one to see us but each other.
In defense of patriarchy, race becomes a shield, protecting the violence and violation poured onto women, femmes, NB, and other gender-marginalized people. The white woman who authored the piece consciously used it as such, and tried to leverage our sympathy with it. But to understand the depth of the damage, the extent to which the world still must change, race is not enough. It still leaves too many of us invisible.
