Why is R. Kelly still a thing?
Because black girls don’t matter enough to enough people to make him disappear.
I’m tired of people still defending R. Kelly.
Singer, songwriter, and R&B producer Robert Sylvester Kelly has come under fire once again for sexual abuse of young women. This time, he allegedly held young women as young as 18 captive in what some of their parents call a sex “cult.” These women live in houses owned by Kelly where every aspect of their lives is controlled — down to what they eat and when they have sex with him.
This isn’t the first time R. Kelly has been accused of something like this. Over a decade ago, he was seen on video urinating on a teenager’s face and engaging in other sexual acts with her. Her close friend identified her and said she began visiting Kelly and receiving money from him at age 12, though she was presumed to be about 14 at the time of the video recording.
In a 2008 interview with Touré, a journalist who covers various aspects of popular culture, Kelly stated a very clear preference for teen girls and made no qualms about it, asking, "When you say teenage, how old are we talking?”
After everything that’s come out about him, I’m still seeing social media posts defending him. People claim that they love his music and aren’t bothered, or fire back that he was never convicted 9 years ago. It’s hard for me to believe that if the victims were young white girls there would be the same reaction.
From what we’ve learned, it's clear that R. Kelly's actions and attitudes toward young women are at best inappropriate, and at worst potentially abusive. So why do artists continue to collaborate with Kelly, despite years of shocking allegations against him? Why do concert venues continue to book his tours, and why do listeners thoughtlessly buy his albums? Why has the music industry continued to enable him and other artists by separating the music from the man?
Why is R. Kelly still a thing?
The victim and parent blaming has been rampant
In an investigative report published on Monday, BuzzFeed interviewed parents and friends of women believed to be so deeply involved with Kelly that they may be under some type of psychological and/or physically abusive control by him. Their fears are made worse by witnesses claiming they have seen Kelly physically abuse these women when they don’t comply with his orders. Kelly has also limited or banned their phone access. Without communication from their girls, concerned parents are desperate for assurance that their daughters aren’t being harmed.
I want to first extend my support to the parents. As a parent, I know that if my child were missing or involved in what I perceived to be an unhealthy situation, I would seek as much help as I could to get him back home safely. And as a black parent, I know that we don’t get the attention and support we need to bring our children, who make up 42 percent of those missing in America, and other loved ones back home safely.
The media won’t tell our stories, though, at least not in the ways reporters focus on white women in peril. We rarely hear about missing black girls. The explanation for the lack of coverage? Media outlets claim they choose to cover stories they believe their watchers will relate to most — the “Missing White Girl Syndrome.”
It’s a piss-poor excuse and further dehumanizes black people and our lives by erasing our experiences from public knowledge. Missing white children are still afforded their innocence and deemed damsels in distress, while black girls are “less innocent” and pegged as runaway prostitutes, drug abusers, or some other description meant to demean them and strip them of humanity and innocence. Just search “missing girl” on Google Images and you’ll see pictures of white women only.
When men are suspected of preying on women of color, the victims and their parents are often blamed first. In the past few days, I’ve witnessed a lot of this sentiment on Twitter and Facebook regarding R. Kelly’s victims. Some say that with all of the allegations against Kelly in the past, parents shouldn’t let their children go around him. I wish I could say I am surprised by this reaction, but I’m not.
People are far more willing to chastise others for not protecting themselves and their children from harmful people than they are willing to chastise the harmful person, especially if that person is a wealthy, successful black man like Bill Cosby. From the moment R. Kelly married Aaliyah, an R&B singer who was 15 at the time, he has managed to escape evisceration for his violations of young black women — perhaps in part because it happened in a time before social media scrutiny.
As an advocate for women and girls, I’ve heard all of the “but his music…!” excuses before. There is no song recorded by R. Kelly that makes me think defending him is more important than protecting vulnerable black girls from harm.
“He wasn’t convicted!” they cry. I respond: “Neither was George Zimmerman.” When it comes to race-based violence, everyone rallies against the oppression of racism, but when it comes to gender-based violence, people are slow to rally and quick to ask, “Why was she there, though?”
Black women have been calling out R Kelly for years. Nobody listened.
I’m often under fire for calling on people to face the truth that black women and girls are underrepresented and often ignored in mainstream feminist discussions about violence against all women and girls. And within our own black communities, calling out violence perpetrated by black boys and men is seen as an act of treason — I and other prominent black feminists have been vilified for calling attention to violence that feels epidemic.
We’re not supposed to talk about it, especially not to non-black “outsiders.” We’re supposed to keep these secrets “in-house” and do less calling out and more coddling. We unapologetically reject that demand and, as a consequence, catch hell from all sides for condemning white feminists and anti-feminist black men alike for the lack of support given to black women.
Do white people even acknowledge R. Kelly as a prominent artist the way black people do, outside of “I Believe I Can Fly” and “Ignition (Remix)”? Unlike Bill Cosby, who took center stage in millions of households of all races every week and who created a wholesome narrative of black family life, R. Kelly rose to fame within the black community because of his licentious lyrics and gyrating, envelope-pushing grooves.
Still, Cosby’s victims have been primarily white women, so whatever support he had from white America has gone sour — so much so that some believe he’s being targeted and set up because he is black. If R. Kelly’s victims had been primarily young white women, how much more outraged would white America feel? How much more insidious would these allegations seem to all of us?
Would they be accused of being “fast,” lacking good parenting, or of being “hoes”? Or would Kelly finally be pegged as the longtime predator that he repeatedly shows himself to be?
It’s time to focus on the victims
According to the latest accusations, Kelly has been filming his sexual activity with these “captive” women. A sex-positive feminist might argue that it’s part of his kink, that perhaps he is engaged in consensual non-consent, a particular type of BDSM, with several women in various places and simply likes to record his encounters.
That would hold water if he hadn’t already shown a pattern of manipulative behavior and a tendency to engage women who have not yet reached the age of consent. It might even pass muster if R. Kelly’s own music didn’t make us cringe with calling himself the “Pied Piper” of R&B, naming Aaliyah’s first album “Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number.”
It might be plausible if we ignored the stories of black women, who make up all of R. Kelly’s victims and who regularly share traumatic stories of being sexually harassed and preyed upon from ages 10 and 11 on social media via hashtags like #YouOKSis and #FastTailedGirls. Many campaigns that address violence against women and girls often feature white faces. That needs to be changed.
In 2014, I created a bystander intervention campaign, “You Ok, Sis?” to help women who experience street harassment get the help and support they need to navigate life more safely. My focus was and continues to be women of color, particularly black women and girls, who experience street harassment earlier in life and in more violent ways.
When black girls and women go ignored by everyone from family members to teachers to news outlets and the media, perpetrators of violence against us feel emboldened to continue treating us abusively. They are comfortable knowing they won’t face the same scrutiny and backlash as they might if they abuse white women because our lives aren’t valued as much.
R. Kelly is the latest example of this. BuzzFeed attempted to reach out to all of the artists R. Kelly has worked with in the past on the latest scandal and couldn’t get anyone to comment on whether they would collaborate with him in the future. How many of those artists are black women themselves and how can they justify defending someone who, for decades now, has exhibited a pattern of predatory behavior involving other black girls and women? It’s painfully clear that for some, money matters most, and working with R. Kelly has been a surefire way to secure a hit record.
Black women matter. If we don’t tell our stories, who will? We cannot rely on white feminist hot takes. While they are shielded and protected by whiteness, black women are left exposed to violence deemed acceptable simply because we exist as black and women.
And how many times do we have to see our own people rush to defend men like Floyd Mayweather, Chris Brown, Ray Rice, Bill Cosby, and R. Kelly just because they feel compelled to support the brothers who “made it”? I understand that we, as a people, have been treated so horribly for centuries that our impulse is to protect those of us who come under attack by “outsiders.” But what happens when the predators are our own men and they target our girls and women? What happens when we give abusers a pass because they keep us entertained?
We know that men who abuse and sexually violate women are from all races and ethnicities. We know that this isn’t specific to black men. However, we know that when the victims are black girls and women, empathy is minimal — from all people. As such, our girls and young women are vulnerable to the predatory allure of fast money, flowery words, empty promises, and whatever other tactics are employed to wrestle them away from their homes and into harmful environments.
Why is R. Kelly still a thing?
Because black girls don’t matter enough to enough people to make him disappear. That won’t stop us from fighting and rallying everyone to #SayHerName. It won’t stop us from crying loud to end invisible street harassment by comforting victims with #YouOKSis. We need to fight to be seen.
Feminista Jones is a social worker, award-winning writer, and community activist currently residing in Philadelphia.
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