Sorry folks, I don't do any weighty thinking after 5:00PM on Fridays. You will have to wait until Monday. but here is an open thread so you can vent together and post links of ridiculousness. In particular, feel free to post comments you read on other blogs. Like these from ESSENCE.COM. Notice most of the screen names appear to belong to women.
I think justice was served. We have several of our black men in jail for these crimes, that they actually do commit, but without knowledge. The teenagers today look and dress like grown ups, and there parents see this and don't care. I don't think people should do time, when they do not know the person is a minor. Another thing the girl denied that it was her, even if it was her you can only go by what she says. The problem is R Kelly is making to much money doing him and people are jealous. Kelly keep doing you. I'm
-Mona Harris
I know R.Kelly did it but so what! He likes young love oh well!!! She allowed herself to be done like that. Why was she at a grown ass man house anyway.EXACTLY!! She wanted it...they wanted it and it doesnt really matter because he was found not guilty so get over it.Im sure he will do it again i just hope next time he leaves the camera at home...Go R. Kelly!!!yeaaaa
-Queenipoo
JUSTICE WAS SERVED !!!! IT'S PROVEN THE MAN IS INNOCENT...I BELIEVED ALL ALONG THAT TAPE WAS CORRUPT.AND SO WAS THE TESTIMONY OF SPARKLE AND THE LIL MONEY HUNGRY TRAMP WHO JUST WANTED MONEY FROM ANY AND EVERY SOURCE SHE COULD GET IT FROM. THE MOLE ON R.KELLY BACK COULDN'T BE EXPLAINED, WHY IT WAS NOT IN THE TAPE.
-REAL JUSTICE
I think that only God knows what happen.And what does it matter what happened anyway.Its not like R.Kelly forced the girl to have sex and I am so sick of people giving young woman the freedom to do what they want and blame the man for their inpurities. That girl knew exactly what she was doing!Furthermore, not only Kelly should've been on trial, but her aunt and mother should be too. Why is a girl that young at R. Kellys home in the first place???It's neglegence on the parents part as well.So don't blame Kelly for taking a
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The R. Kelly case finally went to the jury after FIFTEEN THouSAND YEARS of delay, we will finally get a verdict in this case. I haven't written about the R. Kelly trial very much for the same reason you have never and will likely never read a post about the hurricane Katrina Recovery (lackof)Effort... because it makes my head hurt. The entire atmosphere around this trial has been circus-like as if R. Kelly isn't being accused of being a child molester.
Just how tawdry is this entire situation? Well MTV, a division of VIASLUM, is handicapping the verdict as if this case was a horse race. The victim (whether she acknowledges it or not) in this case has been identified by any number of Black bloggers and called any number of names. We learned that her own family basically sold her down river with her "aunt" literally handing this girl over to Kelly.
We've seen the articles on the idiotic Black women who staged a protest on Kelly's behalf. I will admit to feeling some glee when the judge threw a fully grown Black woman in jail for screaming "Free R. Kelly!" in the presence of the jury and then could not afford to make bail. I've ignored the testimony of Lisa Van Allen, a woman who admitted to having "relations" with both R. Kelly and a purported 13 or 14 year old girl and then preceded to testify that alleged underage victim, wasn't someone "you'd want your son bringing home to dinner." And how would you know Lisa?
I have watched in awe as the masterful defense that I KNEW Kelly HAD to have after successfully getting this trial delayed for FIFTEEN MILLION YEARS never materialized. After over a decade of trial delays, the best they could come up with was "somebody doctored this tape." Yeah right, somebody went frame by frame to insert R. Kelly's head into every frame at the perfectly exact angle. Right. Right. Why would they do that? If I had the ability to do that kind of video editing, I would be making millions in Hollywood or something. None of the cast of miscreants surrounding Kelly appear to have been that bright.
In the back of my mind, it is a real possibility that R. Kelly will walk. My friends have been telling me all the reasons why he is going to the clank, but in this celebrity obsessed culture, no celebrity is toast until they are safely ensconced behind bars. Even then, you end up with cases where they serve ridiculously short sentences... can you say Paris Hilton and even if R. Kelly went to jail, I can assure you, he would be releasing songs from behind bars.
So I have taken an R. Kelly Break in anticipation of the foolishness that will pop off once the verdict is read. In particular, we can anticipate the Black Elite Establishment's particular brand of foolishness where I predict a string of people coming out to say they are "Praying" for Robert or looking forward to working with him when he gets out. The same group of people who facilitated his behavior in the past.
So I'll wait until the verdict gets read. This tawdry affair is worse than being forced to read yet another batch or text messages from Detroit: A Love Story.
Y'all call me when this is finally over... because we all know that if that 14 yar old girl had not been African American, this trial would have been completed years ago. If he is found guilty, that would mean that the state let a predator roam around for years without prosecution.
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The R. Kelly trial is currently underway after about 15 years of delay. Its big news that the jurors in the case viewed the infamous video yesterday.
The 27-minute homemade video shows a man having sex with a young female, who is naked for most of the recording except for a necklace with a cross dangling from it.At the start of the videotape, the man hands the female money and she mouths the words, "Thank you." She is often blank-faced, impassive. The man speaks to the female in a hushed, monotone voice, and she calls him "Daddy."Songs from the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys blare from a radio. The female dances — the man out of view. Back in view, he has sex with her. The man walks up to the camera to adjust it a few times, but his face is often obscured.Prosecutors say the man in the video is Kelly, and that the female is a girl who was as young as 13 when the tape was made between Jan. 1, 1998, and Nov. 1, 2000. Associated Press
Despite all this, can you believe that a group of BLACK WOMEN went down to the courthouse to hold a demonstration on his behalf? Of course you can if you have been reading this blog for any length of time. When it comes to the dehumanizaiton of Black women in this country, don't sleep, many Black women don't value their own lives, let alone the lives of other Black women. Black Acheivement USA, a regular podcast listener loved to say "We love our sons, and raise out daughters.... WITH CONTEMPT! " If you have not read "R Kelly Can Always Count on His WOmen" by Mary Mitchell of the Chicago Sun Times, you must. Mary lays it all out there after a group of Black women staged a rally on behalf of R. Kelly. Since Mary did an outstanding job reading my mind, I will let her article speak for the both of us. My Sisters, we are not alone!!!
I can think of only one reason young black women would go down to 26th and California and rally around R&B singer R. Kelly.
Ignorance.
Although the women who rallied last Friday outside of the courthouse live in a metropolitan area, they are as ignorant about what constitutes appropriate sexual behavior as the women who were locked away on the polygamous compound in Eldorado, Texas. Chicago Sun Times
I leave you with this from Mary's column:
Ironically, while Texas officials raided a polygamous compound to stop older men from marrying underage girls, underage black girls are being impregnated every day by older black men, and these men are rarely held accountable. Mary Mitchell
I won't give you any more quotes take your page clicks over to the Sun Times and show a Sister some support for breaking it down like a fraction, but
We have previously covered the mental illness that causes some Black people to parrot the thoughts of antebellum slave owners. The idea that there is no such thing as a "virtuous" colored girl over the age of 14 and the concept that Black women CANNOT under any circumstances be the victims of sexual exploitation.
Notice that when they went in to the polygamous cult to take away 400 children you didn't see any people rallying at the court house. White teenage girls have to be protected to the tune of millions of dollars and the state taking bus loads of kids away, but Black teenage girls are out of luck. Even if there were large numbers of arrests of predatory older men and boys, I can assure you the NAACP, Rev. Al et al. would be rushing to complain that these men were being treated "unfairly".. Tell that to Warren Jeffs.
What about equal protection under the law for Black teenage girls??? The full weight and force of the law is coming down on the heads of the Texas polygamists while 48% of Black teen age girls purportedly have an STD.
Our "leaders" and delusional supporters will fight like Hell to keep folks out of jail, even when they prey on other members of the community, but did anybody ever think that the victims of these criminals are living in jails of their own? Tell me a 13 year-old who purportedly got pregnant by a fully grown old Karl Malone wasn't "confined" What would she have grown up to do. What places would she have seen? What dreams did she have to defer? What struggles did she endure? Let's not even talk about disease, mental health, and poverty which is its own form of violence. Despite assertions of too many Black folks to count, statutory rape is not a victim-less crime.
2007 shall be known as the year Black folks called out other Black folks publicly and the community lived to tell about it. Folks are planning to get down right indignant, as we all should be, when R. Kelly performs in concert at a church in Los Angeles, CA on Friday. Okay well technically, the church owns The Forum where the concert is taking place
The Forum -- located in Inglewood, CA -- former home of the Los Angeles Lakers, is owned by Faithful Central Church, pastored by Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer. Eurweb
Isn't Rev. Ulmer the same preacher from that dreadful piece of anti single Black woman propaganda "Soulmates"?
How can the church allow R. Kelly to perform on Friday night, have service on Sunday morning and believe all is well?" Ali continues. "The message the church is sending to young children is that money is more important than taking a stand in support of victims who have been victimized by R. Kelly and other child molesters." SOURCE
I think the protesters have a point. What would Jesus do?
I guess all of y'all who don't believe in statutory rape are going to say that the 11 year old was just being fast, right? Hmm one of the perps pulled out the R. Kelly defense
He went to a locked bedroom in his house in the 3700 block of N. 6th St. where he heard "moaning" from inside and eventually was let into the room, where he saw "12, 13 or 14" other men and teens present. He said the girl was freely having sex with several men during the hour he was present, but another man in the room had told her not to have sex with Gurley. She eventually acquiesced, he said, at someone else's urging. The criminal complaint says that person was the 15-year-old boy who is charged.
"I thought she was a boy's girlfriend," he said.
(hmmm where have I heard THAT BEFORE)
So as long as she is a "girlfriend", sex with the underage girl is okay?
He said that he never spoke with the girl and that he didn't think about using a condom. The police officer who arrested Gurley broke the news that the girl was 11, and he later learned the girl had been born with HIV.
It wasn't just men participating in this horror, but they had a 16 year old female instigator:
[T]he girl told police she went to Gurley's house to visit the 16-year-old girl now charged in the case. That older girl suggested the victim perform sex acts with several boys in the house, the victim told police, and she did so, sometimes with more than one person at a time. Some records suggest the older girl directed the victim;
Seriously, this is utterly ridiculous! It is time to declare an end to open season on Black women and girls. Let the battle between Black folks with common sense and those without commence. We might not be victorious, but we have to at least try.
Why aren't we seeing articles on the crisis of the young Black woman? Why do we always seem to be marching on behalf of those accused of crime, but say little or ignore completely victims of crime? Is this poverty's fault again? Not trying to start nuthin', I'm just asking.
UPDATE: Well at least now we know what Rev. Sharpton has been busy doing instead of issuing a statement about crimes against black women and girls. For those who say the Rev. Does not know about Dunbar Village, one of my readers called into his show and I have exchanged e-mails with his indecency initiative chief. So he knows, he just doesn't care as much about this issue as much as he craves getting into a cat fight with a Hip hop "artist."
...Last time I checked, a dog was not human, but a 13-year-old girl was. And regardless as to whether or not she willingly engaged in the act, she was the minor and he was the adult. That's really the bottom line. And since most of us saw that video over the Internet or bought it on the street somewhere, we can't act like that wasn't R. Kelly. Unless you support this type of behavior, you should be as shocked and appalled as I am at the silence from our organizations on it.
Well we can’t be hollering one minute that Black women are queens and are to be respected and protected and then turnaround and cast a blind eye towards R. Kelly, but want to be quick to jump to the defense of people like Michael Vick and Barry Bonds. Well, you can’t if you expect to be taken seriously. Jasmyne Cannick
Of course they are going to turn a blind eye because in the eyes of many people (US), a Black girl isn't capable of being violated. Statutory rape apparently only applies to non Black girls. Because of course folks seem to conclude that if these Black girls weren't so FAST, they would not have been violated by a grown man/ older boy in the first place.- Despite the fact that in most states a girl under a certain age does not have the legal capacity to consent have sex with older men and boys.
You can't have "consensual sex" with an underage girl. She can't give consent. A 15 year old girl can't even consent to getting her ears pierced or getting a spray-on tan. Obama is a Harvard Law grad, I know they went over statutory rape in his criminal law course. Why is he trying to make out Genarlow Wilson to be Steve Urkle? Barak Obama got it wrong on this one.
You're not alone on this Gina. I've argued the same point repeatedly. Does Wilson deserve ten years? Of course not, but he certainly deserved to spend some time in jail. I think its interesting that all of a sudden these young men act as though they don't know what statutory rape is. They certainly understood it back in the 80s when I was a young girl. 15 will get you 20 was the mantra of the day. What's the difference now? These young folk don't believe the law applies to them anymore. And why should they when folk rally around them like they're the second coming of Malcolm X.
Maybe somebody needs to prepare a PSA on that small little fact and while you are at it, somebody needs to pull folks aside and explain that in many states an intoxicated or drugged 17 year old can't have "consensual sex" either!
That is why I stayed out of the whole Genarlow Wilson debate. Almost NOBODY complaining about the sentence said a word about his VICTIMS ( Yes I said VICTIMS (plural)), young Black girls except in passing. (Watch a Video of a Discussion of a Description of the Incident with 17 Year Old)Imagine if Genarlow Wilson and his buddies were replaced by 5 or 6 White Lacrosse players? Would we still be marching then?
Folks just recount the facts of what happened in that hotel as if it was a collateral issue... Because of course, it was the girl's fault; the fact that they might have been intoxicated, one possibly gang raped, and turned into unwitting porn stars is just a small fact. I know I am going to catch hell for committing heresy and not following the party line on Genarlow Wilson, but that is the problem; when it comes to the sexual exploitation of young girls in the Black community, we turn a blind eye - the plight of the accused Black male defendant will always trump the plight of his alleged victims if they happen to be young Black girls. For those complaining about his continued incarceration, Mr. Wilson and his lawyers held the keys to his jail cell, but decided to roll the dice with a 10 year sentence instead of taking a deal which would have let him out for time served and a relatively clean record.
That is why people are still two stepping to R. Kelly. It just isn't possible for a young African American girl to be a victim. Plus some folks thinkdog fighting is more serious than rape.
What I want to know is who marched for these young Black girls? How betrayed must the 17 year old feel? What about her? Oh I forgot, to some folks she's just a young Black chick who should have known better. Was she going off to college? Did she play a sport? Was she on the Honor Roll? Did she have a bright future? How was her life changed by being video taped having sex acts performed on her by 5 to 6 boys? What about her future? Oh yeah, I forget.... She is just a young Black girl so her violation is a small matter to some folks.
The whole NAACP holding a press conference to defend a multimillionaire who has the financial resources to come to his own aid is laughable when you consider the cases of tons of indigent criminal defendants without Michael Vick's financial resources who the NAACP can't muster up the courage to send out a letter to help. Yeah, defending rich, spoiled athletes, that is a noble cause. Somewhere Thurgood Marshall is rolling over in his grave.
UPDATE (8/04): I haven't talked about this on this blog because quite frankly it depressed me too much to even articulate the HORROR in writing. Thanks Tracey for laying it out there.
Tracey said...
Gina,
Where is the outrage about black woman and her son that were robbed and beaten in their own West Palm Beach home? Making matters worse - she was gang-raped and her son was forced at gun-point to participate. He is just 10. This crime was committed by at least 10 young black males. The police have only captured 3 of them - ages 14-18. When reporters went to this housing project - FEMALE residents were unmoved by the crime. I have not seen this incident reported on not one black blog or spoken about by one black activist.
Why the HELL isn't the NAACP holding a press conference on behalf of this poor black woman instead of a RICH Black man who is more than capable of defending himself? Why aren't folks marching on this housing project demanding the identities of the remaining seven rapists?
UPDATE: We are not alone. Someone else is talking about the Florida rape case. More details here and they ask where in the world is Rev. Al? Folks to we need to have another SHARPTON WATCH up in this piece? Has Jesse Jackson offered this victim a college scholarship?
UPDATE (8/5):Wonderful Editorial on the Dunbar Village rape in West Palm Beach, FL and why we ALL need to worry about what happened there. This may very well be one of the most horrifying crimes I have ever heard of. Not just because of what was done, but who did it. When it was over, not a single resident of the housing complex lifted a finger to help this woman and her (now blinded) son. THEY HAD TO STUMBLE TO THE HOSPITAL ON THEIR OWN! Raze this "community" to the ground and salt the earth so that NOTHING will grow there. We can't allow pockets of hell like this to exist in this country.
It only took FIVE YEARS. I still can't figure out what took them so long to go to trial on someone who allegedly has a hankering for very young Black girls. If he is convicted, how many young girls has he had access to in the past FIVE YEARS? just asking.
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