We Have Been of No Assistance

“with no further assistance & no guidance from you
i am endin this affair

this note is attached to a plant
i’ve been waterin since the day i met you
you may water it
yr damn self”

— Ntozake Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

The greatest heartbreak of this tragedy is how closely it parallels the plight of black women in the world.

In danger from the one who claimed he loved her, she received no assistance from those who claimed to have her back.

And I give it just a few comments before someone here blames her for her own death.

We keep telling black women:

“You’re my queen!”

“You’re my Earth!”

“You’re my goddess!”

“You’re the mother of civilization!”

“You’re the backbone of the black family!”

Yeah.

What we consistently leave out, perhaps on purpose, is:

“You’re a human being!”

I believe the entire reason we put black women on those ashy “pedestals” we create for them is so that we can get a thrill at watching them fall when we push them off. It’s a deep-seated hatred, an anti-love masquerading as worship.

Our investment in toxic masculinity, which we think gives us power, makes us a match for white men, and puts us “on the white man’s level,” is inextricable from the death of black women.

I must ask: For a black woman, what’s the difference between us and Daniel Holtzclaw? Any truthful response would reveal a sliver or nothing.

It’s unreasonable, unimaginable, and fatal to expect black women to continue to endure this genocide in the name of black solidarity.

As white people will face a reckoning for their racism, so, too, will black men face one for our misogynoir.

Squirm, run, and deny as we might.

It is inevitable.

For every black woman we street harass, may we be subject to a cop’s stop-and-frisk.

For every black woman we harm, may a cop visit the same upon us.

Until black women are free, NONE of us are.

This story contains graphic descriptions of fatal misogynoir. Discretion is advised.
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 “Julia Martin knew the right thing to do would be to return her engagement ring.

She’d broken it off with her boyfriend of the past three-or-so years about six months ago, according to her father, Derrick Martin.

When her ex came over on the premise of collecting the ring Friday night, he forced open the door and stabbed her repeatedly before jumping to his death from her apartment in the 3000 block of South King Drive, according to police.

Martin, a 27-year-old from Detroit, tried to save her own life. She grabbed her phone and called police. She asked them to send an ambulance for her. She told them the name of the man who stabbed her.

Then she called her dad.

‘Not only did she call me, she texted me while she was going through all this,’ Derrick Martin said Monday. “She was calling everybody, saying that she wanted help. She called another friend and she was panting over the phone, trying to get her breath. He thought it was a prank and he hung up on her. He feels so bad.”

He’s not alone. Martin doesn’t check his phone often and didn’t see the text message from his eldest daughter until much later. It read: ‘Call me ASAP.’”