Officer Daniel Holtzclaw who, after having been convicted of 18 counts of counts of rape and sexual battery has been sentenced to 263 years in prison.
Women, particularly women of color, are too often on the receiving end of abuse – not just from men in general, but specifically from men claiming to love them, or men who are supposed to be protecting them.
For thirteen women in Oklahoma City, that man was Officer Daniel Holtzclaw who, after having been convicted of 18 counts of counts of rape, sexual battery, and assorted other crimes against black women he was targeting, has been sentenced to 263 years in prison.
And the world rejoiced. Actually – the world hasn’t done much of anything, which is a huge problem. According to a BBC News story on the trial from November 2015:
The story was huge when it broke, so local FOX25 reporter Tom George was surprised when he walked into the courtroom for the first day of Holtzclaw’s trial last week.
“The first week, it was almost empty,” says George. “I think there was an assumption that it would be packed.”
There has also been minimal national media attention for the trial, as pointed out many times on social media, sometimes with the hashtag #BlackWomenMatter.
It seems that, because these women were black, poor, and in some cases were dealing with drug abuse or prior crimes, the story didn’t travel very far, making them the “perfect” targets for Holtzclaw in the first place. Even better (or worse, depending on your POV), Holtzclaw’s jury was all-white and all-male. This could have gone very wrong. Thankfully…it didn’t.
You can check out these women’s stories over at Buzzfeed, but he not only sexually assaulted them in various ways, he continued to abuse his power by following them around the neighborhood, intimidating them, as well as family or friends, into silence. Holtzclaw was fired from the OKC police force in January 2015 for the multiple charges brought up against him. He was convicted for 18 of them back in December. He cried many a tear on that day:
Today’s sentencing was delayed for over three hours as Holtzclaw’s lawyer attempted to request a new trial, suggesting that important evidence never made it into this trial. However, it was later revealed/admitted that this “evidence’ was hearsay and based entirely on “office talk” among cops. So the judge was like NOPE. No new trial.
Here’s Holtzclaw being walked into sentencing being followed by the angry questions of a female reporter. Sadly, no water-works display this time:
Then, three of the victims came forward and were given the chance to testify about how what Holtzclaw did affected their lives:
White police officer, all-male all-white jury, and the victims being poor black women of various circumstances and with various histories (some of which includes other crimes). This could have gone so wrong. Too often women like these aren’t believed, or are made to feel like they brought it on themselves.
But the Oklahoma City police force fired his corrupt, raping ass, and a jury of his peers found him guilty, then sentenced him to literal centuries in prison. This is how it’s done. This is what should happen all the time. And now we all have the pleasure of watching Holtzclaw shuffling off to prison as we’re like:
Here’s hoping that these women can get their lives back together, secure in the knowledge that this scumbag of a human can never be in a position to hurt them again.
With limited access to mental health services in most low-income communities, more than telling our kids we love them, we also have to normalize showing them.
Most times, subtle signs of trauma and even cries for help present themselves in the most inconspicuous ways. With a lack of mental health services in many communities, if we’re not paying attention, we can miss them.
The other day I figured I’d stop by my nephews’ Facebook walls to let them know I loved them. We’re a family full of Cancers. (the Zodiac sign known for being loving and nurturing). So, it’s not unusual for us to be all mushy on social media.
Under the “I love you” post on my oldest nephew’s page, one of my little cousins asked, “Did something happen to him?” and that immediately broke my heart because, to me, that’s a trauma response.
My little cousin is a 15-year-old Black boy, sweet as can be, and he spent a lot of time with my nephews during his childhood. For him to assume that something bad may have happened to someone he looked up to because of a loving social media post is problematic.
Behavioral health professionals and paramedics on Street Crisis Response Teams are handling non-violent mental health calls instead of police under a San Francisco Department of Public Health pilot program.
We need to outwardly express love to our loved ones
Let me get this out the way real quick–y’all, we have to normalize telling our people we love them, especially our young ones, especially considering the lack of mental health services in our communities.
It speaks to the saying, “Give people their flowers while they’re here”. Time is limited, life is too short and no one can say, “I’ll wait until tomorrow to hug that person, kiss that person, tell that person I love them” because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.
On a deeper level, it’s not my little cousin’s fault for assuming something bad happened, nor is it an uncommon response or reaction for most Black boys or girls. It’s a symptom of growing up in a world that’s committed to murdering their spirits. But, we have to be mindful of how those symptoms manifest themselves in their development and behavior. We must counteract the symptoms with healing and love.
According to the Better Health Channel, some of the ways youth react to trauma are by overreacting to minor irritations, displaying an increased need for independence and similar to the situation above, displaying overprotectiveness with loved ones. The site also mentioned youth have strong emotions such as sadness, anger, anxiety and guilt.
Loss influences behavior
Supporting the aforementioned diagnosis is an article published by The Atlantic last year that highlighted the effects of living in poor, segregated communities.
Over the course of three years, a researcher interviewed about 165 Black males in high school and up to the age of 24. What the researcher noticed was “chronologies of loss” that influenced behavior. But without this context, our boys are labeled as aggressive, special needs, truant, etc. and penalized with punishment, particularly in the school and juvenile justice systems.
Similarly, Black girls internalize their pain more and are potentially prone to self-harm due to untreated trauma. And worse, the stress caused by trauma has been known to lead to chronic illnesses such as heart disease and hypertension, which are prevalent in the Black community. Meanwhile, mental health services aren’t.
Show love while they’re here
With limited access to mental health services in most low-income communities, more than telling our kids we love them, we also have to normalize showing them.
Showing our kids love is investing in their healing, holistically. Minimally, checking in with them to see how they’re doing. Affirming their existence and congratulating them on their achievements. Doing fun or peaceful activities outside of the environment that causes the trauma. Involving them in extracurricular activities that help relieve stress. Whatever makes them smile and brings them genuine joy is probably a viable option.
I know we love our babies but we’re raising some them in environments that aren’t too kind and harmful to their spirits. The best and most we can do for them is help them see beyond the trauma with radical love.
Tenderness is often treated like “oversensitivity” or weakness – but these wonderful insights show how being tender with ourselves and others can be exactly what we need.
Whenever I come into a new space, there’s always a sense of nervousness and anticipation.
From the time I was small and up until now, I was painfully shy in new settings, took time to come out of my shell, and struggled to relate to other folks my age.
Finding community that looked like me was even more challenging, which made finally finding it that much more meaningful.
I remember the excitement of entering spaces with activists, artists, youth workers, and queer folks of color after a lifetime of not seeing myself reflected anywhere else. I came to realize that much of my earlier silence and shyness came from not being allowed to bring all of myself where I went. But when I discovered sacred community, walls slowly began to come down.
I have connected with fierce activists and chosen family in whose presence I am made better. Like most relationships worth having, being in community is not always (or often) easy. In my circle are people who challenge me to grow, who will collect me when I need to be collected, who expand my political and world views, and who actively live the principles of love and tenderness. (In other words, #squadgoals.)
“Tenderness” is something I write about a lot because I’ve always been called tender or hypersensitive, and up until recently I wanted very badly to change that part of myself.
Tenderness is often seen as frailty and as a weakness, especially in the violently oppressive context we live in. But when it comes to building true and sustainable communities of oppressed people, it is a virtue.
Tenderness isn’t just a state of how we react or don’t react to what people say and do to us – it’s about how we choose to treat other people. And that starts with how we treat ourselves.
1. Tenderness at Home: Loving Ourselves
There’s this thing that happens in social justice movements that’s been happening since the beginning of time. Activists throw themselves wholeheartedly into “the work” because “the work” is with the people. Their entire self becomes wrapped up in the movement.
Stakes are high, people are being pushed out of their homes and being killed, and our commitment to liberation has to be unwavering and put above all else.
I appreciate the revolutionary commitment of these beliefs, from the lips of my grandparents and from the courage of Black Panthers. But I wonder how it is possible to give ourselves fully to “the people” when we’re not our whole or full ourselves.
The art of loving ourselves is difficult because, as I wrote recently, there are no tools to teach us how to love ourselves, but there are plenty of pressures to prioritize care for others.
And yet, I’ve often found that not only does neglecting to care for myself adversely impact my health and well-being – it also means that I can’t show up in community the ways I want to.
When I speak about self-care, I’m not thinking of the privileged way it’s sometimes portrayed – expensive vacations and retail therapy. I’m talking about the importance of recognizing and healing our trauma, especially as oppressed people and activists.
Being a Black person living in the constant context of anti-Black racism is traumatic. The backlash and hatred activists receive for speaking out against oppression has a cumulative impact. Losing loved ones in our community to state-sanctioned violence and to suicide is traumatic. Pausing to care for ourselves does not take away from our ability to be present for community – it increases it.
Doing “the work” of social justice movements and being in community necessitates an unwavering commitment to tending our wounds in between marches.
2. Treating Our Community as Our Teachers
There are people in my community who don’t like me. And there are some that I haven’t had the best impressions of, either. But I still consider them my community regardless.
To me, those who are struggling to get themselves and their people free from oppression are my community, whether I’ve met them or not. And whether or not we agree on how and why we get free.
I can understand the unapologetic dismissiveness that’s become commonplace in many activist communities. Personally, I work hard to resist waving people off like they’re nothing more than an unwanted thought because they messed up my gender pronouns or “don’t get down how I get down.”
“Something so-and-so said didn’t rub me the right way, so there goes all possibility of any further conversation.” Not only is this not helpful in sustaining (or even beginning) potentially transformational relationships, it also suggests that “our way” of doing things is the “right” way, and we’ve figured everything out. And this limits our ability to learn and grow from people who move through the world differently.
When we are tender with our community, even those we don’t agree with or have had disputes with, we are committing to longer lasting and stronger coalitions.
There’s a difference between struggling to understand someone’s behavior and being taken advantage of, though. We can understand what our limits are. And when it’s no longer healthy for us to engage with someone (or multiple someones), we can create the necessary boundaries needed to occupy shared space.
As I’ve said before, tenderness is often seen as a weakness, but it’s anything but. When I think about the patience, love, and openness it takes to still be open to learning from those who’ve argued with us or who’ve even hurt us – it feels like the revolutionary strength we need to get free.
That said, please note that these examples are referring to day-to-day conflict that is political in nature – I believe that interpersonal conflicts involving abuse (which also happens in political communities) are a lot different.
3. Expanding Our Ideas of Service and Liberation
Part of my initial hesitation to enter activist community was my shyness. But the other part was that I had in my mind a certain archetypal spokesperson who was charismatic, convincing, and outspoken. They were at the head of the protests, on the news, or speaking eloquently into a bullhorn – and I didn’t picture myself doing many of those things.
It didn’t occur to me in my younger years that activists were as diverse as the communities we served – full of soft-spoken, quiet leaders and healers and behind-the-scenes geniuses.
Although my inner circles and broader community has included all types of personalities and leaders, there is still a celebratory nature to being visible, at the front of the struggle, and in the streets – sometimes to the point where others are criticized for not being involved in the same ways.
Sometimes the irony lies in being on the streets for “Black Lives Matter” or another cause when we’re not loving up on the Black people in our lives. At its worst, preoccupation with curating community and organizing only in a way that can be shared on social media can have us neglecting other areas of building with one another.
What if liberation simply boils down to the fact that we are able to survive and thrive as oppressed people? What if our daily act of service is loving up on ourselves so that we don’t enact our trauma on folks in our community? What if our moving towards freedom is bringing a friend food because they can’t get out of bed and are scared to ask for support?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we should necessarily get badges of honor for any of these acts – I just argue that caring for our community in these and other basic ways are as important as how we take to the streets.
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.” —Che Guevara
“We are taught that we are first Black, then women. Our families have taught us this, and society in its harsh racial lessons reinforces it.
Black women have survived by keeping quiet not solely out of shame, but out of a need to preserve the race and its image. In our attempts to preserve racial pride, we Black women have sacrificed our own souls.”
J. Marion Sims, the "father of modern gynecology," has a disturbing history.
The history of reproductive health care in the U.S. is fraught with racism, as white women’s reproductive health care access came at the cost of black and brown women’s lives.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a known eugenicist; the earliest forms of birth control were tested on Puerto Rican women, and black slaves were routinely purchased or rented by medical professionals to be tested on.
Now, a group of black women is calling for the removal of a statue in New York City that represents this dark history.
The Black Youth Project 100, an activist group founded in 2013, staged a protest against the statue of J. Marion Sims outside the New York Academy of Medicine on August 19. They photographed their protest in a now-viral Facebook post in which they explain the reason they are calling for the statue’s removal.
“J. Marion Sims was a gynecologist in the 1800s who purchased Black women slaves and used them as guinea pigs for his untested surgical experiments,” they wrote. “He repeatedly performed genital surgery on Black women WITHOUT ANESTHESIA because according to him, ‘Black women don’t feel pain.’” (See the striking protest and read the whole post below.)
The protest’s organizer, Seshat Mack, told HuffPost that she and fellow BYP 100 members thought it was important to protest the New York City-based statue, especially as white supremacy is so frequently looked at as a “southern problem.”
“Memorializing white supremacy is an American problem, not just a southern one, and it’s a problem that we need to reckon with as a country,” Mack said.
She also discussed the important relevance of the intersection of black women and reproductive justice.
“We cannot overlook the fact that J. Marion Sims’ discoveries on enslaved black women’s bodies led to the foundation of modern gynecology,” she told HuffPost.
And yet, as she points out, black women continue to receive poor reproductive and maternal health care.
“Black women continue to suffer worse health outcomes than white women,” she said. “In the United States, black women are still two-to-six times more likely to die during childbirth than white women. The institution of reproductive health was built on the exploitation of black women, but this very institution continues to underserve black women.”
BYP 100′s call for the statue’s removal comes less than a week after cities across the country removed Confederate statues in the wake of the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Va. on August 12. (More and more cities have continued the effort.)
In New York City specifically, Mayor Bill de Blasio has called for a 90-day review of any “hate symbols.” City Councilwoman speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito hopes that Sims’ statue will be included in that analysis.
“It has got to go,” she told the New York Times. “When the panel does its analysis, I think they will come to the same conclusion.”
Mack told HuffPost that the removal of the statue would be a welcome response to her protest, but that the work can’t stop there.
“This is a really cute first step,” she said, of De Blasio’s analysis. “But the next step (and the harder step) is ensuring that removal of these racist, white supremacist statues isn’t simply symbolic.”
Mack cites reparations and a divestment in “systems uphold white supremacy” like the prison industrial complex, as true advancements in the fight for racial justice.
“We want investments in our communities for Black people, including robust mental health facilities, education, childcare, accessible and healthy food, [and] housing.”
He wasn’t a conservative because he didn’t come back to preserve the status quo but to shake it to its very foundation. He wasn’t burdened with the need to be liked by people. He wasn’t moved by the desire for expediency or convenience. Instead, he simply allowed truth to reign supreme.
It’s time for all black churches to embrace the heart of Jesus Christ not just by quoting scripture but by letting their actions speak louder than their words.
When the woman who was caught in adultery in the bible was about to be stoned to death, Jesus didn’t pray for her an go back to business as usual. He said something. His mighty act of speaking out, saying “Let he without sin cast the first stone,” saved her life.
Blacks Leaving the Church
The black church is in a precarious position in 2017 because many black people are turning away from the church. The reasons vary, but one the main reasons is the black community, in general, thinks of the American Church as a religion, which generally, disregards institutional racism, mass incarceration, police brutality – whether in America’s past or present.
So while strange fruit remains hanging from our trees and cages continue to be filled with singing birds. The black church is silent and seems almost indifferent concerning the plight of the people it ministers to every day.
While the black church prophesies to young black people, who they are in Christ, and that what God has for you is for you, the black church and churches generally refuse to speak out against dismantling the system that has oppressed African-Americans and continues to suppress.
The black community has become deaf to what preachers have to say because of the preachers who neglect to seek justice for people of color. People of color rightly have become deaf to these preachers as even our Lord closes his ears to the prayers of those who neglect this task – saying,
“When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! (Isaiah 1:15).”
These pastors would rather scripture the issue away as if there is not a biblical responsibility to speak the truth and then do something.
The Bible calls Jesus Christ the truth and yet church leaders are afraid to speak the truth. How can you have the truth, and not speak the truth, is the question many in black America are asking?
The Black Church can no longer be quiet about the injustices that happen in the same neighborhoods where they minister.
The Black Church can no longer pacify its member’s and then tell them to pray and then be quiet concerning Social Justice issues.
No action, no voice, and no change seem to be the MO of the church in the Black Community. Not all Black church’s, but not enough are speaking out.
How can we be silent while the very people that we minister to are suffering under an unjust system that oppresses them socially and economically?
The responsibly to say something is not just for those folks we minister to but to the ones we don’t minister to also. You know Pookie and Ray-Ray need to have the Black Church speak on their behalf. They all need the Black Church to say something because nobody wants to know how much you know until they know how much you care.
The Black Church Has Lost Credibility
The Black Church has lost credibility as the voice of the black community. The Black Church has gone the way of building big churches instead of building its community. The Black Church seems more interested in how many members it can get versus “how can I positively affect the lives of the members I have?”
Let me repeat this: This is not every Black Church, but too many are silent and say nothing while the community looks to them to lead; they lead from the rear.
The Black Church Must Speak!
The Black Church needs to say something because Dr. King echoed these powerful words in his letter from the Birmingham jail:
“Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being ‘disturbers of the peace’ and ‘outside agitators.’ But they went on with the conviction that they were a ‘colony of heaven’ and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be ‘astronomically intimidated.’ They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.”
Dr. King’s uncompromising stance to speak truth to power caused many newspapers to write articles against him; Civil Rights organizations voted resolutions against him, preachers came out against him, and his invitation to the White House was canceled.
He didn’t subscribe to the God’s gonna bless you theology; he adhered to the dogma of you gotta say something. No need to shout folks down and give them 3-points and a poem and then whoop out a hymn, if you don’t speak out when they are being oppressed by systemic racism.
Dr. King recognized that the Black community needed a voice that would address its needs and not just give them a sermon on Sunday and then send them out into the neighborhoods to deal with a broken judicial system – that is affectionately called a justice system by those that it works for – when true justice is just a pipe dream for them.
Dr. King chooses to be one of the titans of the Black Church that lead the movement for social justice.
He gave a harsh critique of the Black Church, and it was needed.
The Black Church can no longer take the immortal words of Dr. King and file them away in their mental storehouse, never to be applied to the current situation of social injustice that plagues our community today. To do that makes the legacy of Dr. King devoid of relevance.
The black community is riddled with major issues that need to be addressed. From education, police brutality, mass incarceration, voting rights discrimination, poverty, all ills caused by systemic racism. Racism and oppression need to be called out and called out in the public square.
Connie Davis was afraid to go into the bathroom. Fire escapes and stairwells at the Air Force bases where she was stationed also stirred fear.
Enemies within the ranks could be lurking in such secluded spots.
But Airman Davis, who started as a mechanic after joining the Air Force in 1974, said she was sexually assaulted despite her efforts to avoid places where she might be vulnerable.
She is not alone. One in four women and one in 100 men who receive care from Veterans Affairs report they are victims of military sexual trauma, also known as MST, according to the VA.
Davis, 64, said she knew that if she reported her assault, there would be retaliation. “You bury it. You move on,” she said in a recent interview at the Garden State Diner, where she met up with fellow veterans Diane Smith, a former Marine sergeant, and Alvina Wimbish, who was an Air Force staff sergeant.
All three have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. For them, solace comes from belonging to an unusual peer support group of veterans.
The group meets weekly at the diner, near the Joint Base, in Wrightstown, Pennsylvania. Nearly all of the 60 veterans who attend are male, and at the root of their PTSD generally is what you might expect: combat trauma.
The group includes five women. Two of the three who were interviewed cited sexual assault, along with exposure to harsh conditions in boot camp, as events that left a lasting scar. The third said she, too, had lived in fear of sexual assault while in the service. None have found it easy to talk about it. The men share their experiences with the group, the women tend not to.
The three women weren’t diagnosed until a few years ago, when their military experiences came up during therapy they sought for other problems. After leaving the service, all three worked at the mail processing plant in Hamilton, N.J., the target of an anthrax attack soon after 9/11.
That terrifying experience, a car accident, a physical assault and personal tragedies also contributed to the PTSD that they say started when they were on active duty.
Davis recalled the humiliation she experienced when her ex-husband pushed her to tell her superior officer about being sexually assaulted. She said the officer told her the unwanted attention she received was her fault. “He made it seem like I was a whore, and I did nothing wrong,” she said, her voice rising in anger.
Smith, of Browns Mills, said she too was sexually assaulted and sexually harassed while she was in the Marines, between 1978 and 1984. She did not report it. “They would say you’re just whining, you’re being a girl. And you know you must never, never cry. You just act like it doesn’t bother you,” she said.
In a survey released by the Pentagon last year, about 14,900 service members, male and female, reported they had experienced some form of sexual assault. The Pentagon also said six out of 10 reported retaliation after filing a complaint.
Lori Maas, manager of the women’s program at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center, said individual therapy and group programs are offered to women with PTSD and MST at clinics in the city and South Jersey.
“The role of women in the military, until recently, was not in combat. But the war is still present for them: They are in the combat zones, and while they may not have the rifle, they are being exposed to traumatic events that are pretty significant,” she said.
Smith, 57, said she feels better after she goes to the peer support group at the diner, just being among veterans, male and female, all struggling to make sense of what happened to them.
The men have welcomed them, she said, and the women enjoy the camaraderie.
“We all went through some awful mess in the military. No one here wants to hurt you. … The group gives you a sense of being, that you’re not the only one,” Smith said.
Until the interviews, Davis and Smith had not even disclosed to each other the sexual assaults they had endured in the military. “The stereotype of military women is they are either lesbians or whores,” Davis said, shaking her head.
All three women were married and had children while in the service, but still felt misunderstood, labeled.
At one of the group meetings, one of the men reminded the others to curb their swearing because there are “ladies in the room.” Smith, who has five children and five grandchildren, said that made her feel respected.
Tony Capone, a retired social worker who counsels the group, said military women have the same anger issues and nightmares as the men. PTSD also causes anxiety and flashbacks, and can lead to suicide.
He has counseled women with MST and others who witnessed death and destruction. He also has helped battlefield triage nurses whose job is to decide “who gets treated and who doesn’t, and then they have to hold the hands of those who don’t get treatment and watch them die,” Capone said.
Local veterans formed the group Capone leads at the diner two years after the VA disbanded its own peer support group at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. The vets didn’t want to travel to Philadelphia where the VA started a new group. About 200 vets have signed up for the group that meets at the diner, and about 60 drop in each week.
Wimbish, who started as a singer with an Air Force band in the early 1980s, said one of her most terrifying military experiences was when she was deployed during Desert Storm, to a Middle East location to support an aircraft-refueling mission. On the way there, she said she was handed an M-16, though she had not received training in how to use it. “I was scared to death,” she said.
A few months later, she said, she and six others in her unit were left behind at a Middle East aircraft hangar for nearly a week after most of the others troops were evacuated.
The pilot who came for them “laughed and said we forgot about you,” she said. The unit had barricaded the hangar doors with furniture for protection and slept on desks. “It wasn’t funny. It still hurts,” she said.
For Davis, there is the memory of a training drill at boot camp that turned fatal. She saw a recruit who was running in front of her collapse and die. “I blamed myself — I thought maybe I was too slow to help him,” she said.
For Smith, there was the racism she encountered off the base when she was stationed in Georgia. When she would ride her bicycle, some motorists would yell racial epithets and one passenger tried to knock her off the bike.
Davis said she copes now by attending the group sessions, volunteering at church, and painting. One portrait is labeled “Silent pain.”
“All of us just try to bury it all,” Davis said. “But we probably shouldn’t.”
