Let me ask you this:
you are honestly maybe
one of the only voices
I would want to engage with on this topic.
R. Kelly.
Yes.
R. Kelly is a really interesting case
where many people have
espoused different ideas
about why it's happened the way it has,
why's it gone on for as long as it has,
et cetera, et cetera.
And one of the themes that people seem
to keep coming back to is the idea
that were it not that he was doing this
to young black girls,
he wouldn't have gotten
away with it for so long.
And in the book you speak about the idea
of how people have
sexualized the black girl,
like she never gets to be a black girl,
sex is always what is
perceived to be what she wants
and what she espouses.
You talk about how a
white female counterpart
at the same age is not seen as sexualized.
When you look at the story of R. Kelly,
when you look at the story of these girls,
when you look at how even
people in the black community
have reacted to it,
what do you think we're missing,
what do we think we could be doing better
and what do you think,
what have you learned
and what do you think
we should learn from the entire story?
I think one of the things
that we should learn from this story
is that celebrity is a cult
just like any other cult.
And so, the leeway we have given R. Kelly
is in part due to the fact
that we think celebrities exist
above and beyond all of our social norms
and that in fact to excessively violate
the social norms makes
you more creative, right?
So that we have a long history of that
across all forms of music,
of celebrities throughout time
who have dated and preyed upon young women
and it was seen as part of
their creative eccentricities.
So, that's one thing.
I think the other thing is precisely that.
That we are comfortable with black girls
always being perceived as responsible
for people's desire for them.
When people desire
children in other contexts,
we say that person has an issue.
When the object is black girls,
we say that other people's desire for us
is our personal responsibility.
And so, one of the things
that I think we owe black girls
and what I would hope
a point we would get to
is to give them the agency
that allows them to be black girls
and that is to say, "I am not responsible
for how people perceive me."
To hold adults responsible
for adult behavior and to
allow black girls to be girls.
Wow, thank you very much.
Tressie McMillan Cottom, everybody.
