The Door to the Whirlwind

Please don’t drive drunk, okay? Seriously. It’s so fucked up. But by all means, walk drunk. That looks hilarious.

The Young Girl barely knows the difference between being owned and being cared for…The Young Girl is my 4-year old self who once felt comfortable with an uncle, but turns 17-years-old and avoids his gaze at dinner. The Young Girl is Aaliyah – who married a 27-year-old R. Kelly at 15. He goes on to assault every other young women he crosses paths with. And the community says, “How could we have known?” The Young Girl is 16-year old Jada, who’s rape went viral and was mocked by thousands after her attackers posted videos and photographs of her naked, violated body on social media—eventually shared by over 1 million viewers, under the hashtag #jadapose. The Young Girl is Tjihsha Ball, 18 and Angelia Magnum, 19, bound together by zip ties and left to die on a Florida road. The local media coverage mentions the girl’s occupations (strippers), their economic status and criminal record, but never discuss the efforts to find their killers. …This is about men getting away with being predators, and the way our society puts girls without advocates in danger. Our most vulnerable and most at-risk young women are left to “figure it out,” but we offer them no support and no models of healthy relationships…The rest of the world turns a blind eye to the safety of black girls, so much so that our girls never get to be girls. They come out of the womb as women, thought of as inherently sexual, immoral, and self-sufficient. In this world, the only person responsible for a black woman is herself.