Some Of Our Favorites Are Trash. This Is How We Deal.

When a famous Black man is accused of gender violence, we can have constructive conversations without resorting to moral relativism or pathologizing.

TW: Rape/Sexual Assault

If you like anything that athletes, artists and celebrities contribute to society, but you are against gender violence (including domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, and general unsavoriness towards women) the last few years have been difficult. I am now unable to watch The Cosby Show, listen to Cee-Lo’s Christmas album (which my mom loves), and now I wonder if I’ll be able to sit through Nate Parker’s Nat Turner film, A Birth of a Nation, which I was really looking forward to.

As far as why we should be talking about Parker’s rape case now, since it was almost 20 years ago, I’d like to point out that women are often defined by the mistakes we’ve made or the people we slept with. As recently as October of 2015, a GQ Magazine article referred to author, model and TV show host Amber Rose as a “former teenaged stripper,” right after introducing her as the ex-girlfriend of Kanye West and “baby mama” (not wife, which she still was legally) of Wiz Khalifa (1). The media loves to define women by aspects of our lives that occurred due to poor choices or lack of choices, and not in a sympathetic way. If GQ Magazine can bring up the fact that Rose stripped over a decade ago, why would Parker’s involvement in a criminal case be off-limits?

While this piece is inspired by the particulars of Parker’s rape case, it is not directed at any individual athlete, celebrity, or person of note. Rather, its aim is to address the dissonance that Black people have when a well-known and celebrated Black man is accused or otherwise found to be responsible for gender violence. Yes, the criminal justice system wrongful convicts Black men and women of crimes they didn’t commit. Yes, an influential, wealthy and successful Black man does represent a threat to the power structures aimed at disenfranchising us. Yes, there is a long history of Black men being killed because of false accusations of rape by white women.

Nothing I write is attempting to negate any of these truths, nor argue that Black men are more prone to gender violence. Rather, there are factors that have helped me reconcile…