“You rape our women and you’re taking over our country.”
As a white woman, there is so much I cannot speak to regarding what happened in Charleston, but when I heard these words, one of the first thoughts to cross my mind was “Oh HELL NO! Are you kidding me with this shit?!”
This is, without a doubt, a race-based hate crime. Sorry to the newscasters and others who want to try and make this a crime about “Christians,” because as a Christian, I can speak to that and I’m here to tell you, nope, this is not about you. As a woman though, I have something I desperately want to add to this conversation. I have something to say to Dylann Roof and his ilk, because I know there are more of you out there.
We are NOT your women.
We never have been, and we never will be. Do not attempt to use women, white, black or any other, as a justification for your horrible racist beliefs. Do not attempt to use the violence that all too often occurs against women in America–at the hands of all kinds of people–as your reason to perpetrate such heinous violence against others. Do not try with your pathetic words to act like this was done in some sort of sick and twisted defense of women.
We didn’t ask for your help, we don’t want your help, and this ISN’T HELP we would want even if we DID ask for it. It is no surprise that someone who holds the wildly insane, deeply embedded racist beliefs that you do also believes women are chattel and belong to men.
I’m here to tell you, little man, we don’t. Not in this lifetime or any other.
We are women. We belong to no one but ourselves. We are Black. We are White. We are Asian, Hispanic and Native American. We are wives and mothers. We are, more than we should be, victims of terrible crimes. But the one thing that we are not is YOUR EXC– USE.
On behalf of all the White American Women who are devastated by the carnage you have wrecked, the lives you have stolen, and the horror you have inflicted, I want you to know that you do NOT have our permission to use us as any sort of rationalization for your evil thoughts and actions.
Blame rests squarely on your own shoulders and spreads like the scourge that it is to the people who allowed you to live a life full of these bigoted ideas, who taught you that these views were legitimate, who purchased the apartheid patches on your jacket and who, ultimately, handed you a gun.
And, in case you are wondering, the mentally ill feel the same way, so don’t even try to go there with your defense.
(All of us here at BLUNTmoms send out our condolences as we share in the heartbreaking aftermath of the tragedy in South Carolina. There are truly no words to justify such a heinous attack.)
Melissa Coble writes at An Unfit Parent. You can also find her on Facebook.
6 Comments
Thank you. Genderizing and putting the race card on a crime must stop. We are humans. All of us. The idiots and the bashers and the ones who love. The blame must go on the person committing the crime. It is not on me or anyone else. It is the choice of the person who built the bomb or set the fire or pulled the trigger or used that knife.
Yes. I can’t even form sentences about this tragedy yet because it is so inconceivable to me that people not only do these things, but that they feel no remorse and in fact feel not only justified in their actions, but heroic. I commend you on a well-written piece that is thoughtful in a time of senselessness.
Really? You’re going to say it’s about you as a white woman? He didn’t single out the men in this group. He didn’t even go somewhere that would have a majority of men and boys present. He targeted black people, and his remarks about women are incidental to his true motive. Nice try to move the focus, but no white lady, it ain’t about you, either.
I don’t think that the writer was in any way trying to say that it was about HER or at all take away from the indescribable losses felt by the entire community. I believe that her point is that if any other person feels the need to take up arms against anyone else on her behalf – or to list her or any other woman as any part of the rationale – that they should just sit their asses right back down again. If you took offence to her rebuke because she is a white woman, then I am sorry that you are upset.
It is so important for white women to say “not in my name,” loudly and often! The re is a racist and sexist paradigm at work in this, and it matters to me that 6 of the nine people killed were women. White supremacy is at the heart of this to be sure, but packed into white supremacy is male supremacy, and “protecting white women” means “don’t mess with my damn property. ” So hell yeah, call that out, or else be complicit in my and your own destruction. This Black woman says it’s about time. d
Right on sister. Your point about the blame resting with everyone that encountered this man is so poingant. This man was taught to act like this and people he knew condoned reflected and encouraged his ignorant blelefs. A woman was just shot at a mall where I live by a security guard that was harassing women. She reported him. He was fired. He shot her at the mall while she was at work for the Iowa city children’s museum. I said the same thing. Who are the people that taught him how to treat women? Why didn’t his friends and coworkers tell him to stop being a pig. Great post.