“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.