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    Black Women Are Not Props

    By 6 Mins Read
    Image credit: Wikimedia Commons (Evers, Joost / Anefo)

    After his very publicly and increasingly messy split from Jeanie Mae Jenkins,  former co-host of the Great Value version of The View, The Real, the Atlanta-bred rapper Jeezy sat down for an interview with Black America’s sweetheart Nia Long, who was publicly embarrassed by her longterm fiancé and father of her son, and Boston Celtics head coach, Ime Udoka, cheating her on her with his Mormon (deduce what you must) coworker, less than a year prior. 

    The timing could not have been more perfect. Jeezy, a man of few words that are not printed by Rap Genius, gushed over Long, giving her much-deserved flowers. Jeezy and Long speak on Black love, almost as if to reach out and reconnect with Black women after his split from an Asian woman who stated how she likes her “dark meat on the side,” which if that ain’t fetishism, I do not know what is. Rap musicians obviously have a non-white fan base, but appealing to the core audience, especially the women of the core audience, never hurts unless, of course, you are a Black woman.

    After being convicted of assault and harassment stemming from an altercation with his then-girlfriend Grace Jabbari, Jonathan Majors is now on a press tour with his new girlfriend, Meagan Good. A secret recording of Majors and Jabarri shows Majors lambasting his abused girlfriend for not being like Coretta Scott King or Michelle Obama. In a recent interview with ABC News‘ Linsey Davis, Majors gleefully notes that he has finally found his “Coretta” in Good.

    Martin Luther King Jr. Martin and Coretta Scott King have been a stronghold and the pinnacle of the Black Love Zeitgeist, with their images immortalized in giant murals, statutes and even rap songs for decades. Maybe being called Civil Rights fine went to Majors’ head, but either way, the comparison is way off and afront to the individual accomplishments of both King and Good, the latter having fame much sooner than him. Majors became famous by playing roles that catered to a Black audience, and in that part of that time, Majors and his ex-girlfriend Jabbari dated for two years. In that time frame, there is only one picture of the two together, circling the vast expanse that is the internet. His relationship with Good has been less than half the time but she has more than twice the press exposure, solidifying the actress as his new P.R. stunt person. 

    Coretta Scott King studied music before she met Martin. Her dreams of having her own career as an accomplished singer were put on hold to raise a family, as were the dreams of many Black women at the time. Whether consciously or not, part of the problem with Martin and Coretta being held as the Black Love standard is how she is often relegated to support staff in the conversation. Her life was not easy, and what she endured should not be compared to supporting a man who got caught beating up his white ex-girlfriend or even worse compared to his white ex-girlfriend, when the trauma she endured was directly from white people. Her home was bombed while she was in it alone with her 10-month-old daughter. Someone shot a gun through her front door. Her husband was either jailed or away quite often. During a time that far predates caller ID, picking up the phone hoping to hear news from or about her beloved husband was a gamble, often met with her receiving harassment by local racists and even the FBI instead.

    Coretta Scott King was a Civil Rights advocate in her own right and after Dr. King died, she continued his work and was responsible for urging then-president Ronald Reagan to make Martin Luther King Jr. a federal holiday. A supporter of the women’s movement and LGBTQ rights, her advocacy stretched into territories that her husband’s was not able to achieve.  Meagan Good, for the most part, has remained unproblematic but being an actress and a sex symbol is hardly deserving of the comparison to Coretta Scott King, and Coretta Scott King does not deserve the comparison that reduces her life and its accomplishments to someone who starred in Cousin Skeeter. 

    It is difficult not to juxtapose the lived reality of many people experiencing healing from Black women against the danger of being relegated to a magical negress or a stand-in if it does not work out with a woman-of-other. A prominent member of The Black Panther Party, which is still championed for its stance of Black liberation, Eldridge Cleaver was an admitted rapist and viewed the rape of Black women as a practice for raping white women. He used white men raping Black women as justification for his perversion, seeking revenge for the same crime he was committing. 

    In his book of essays, Soul On Ice, Cleaver writes, “I became a rapist. To refine my technique and modus operandi, I started out by practicing on Black girls in the ghetto…when I considered myself smooth enough, I crossed the tracks and sought out white prey.”

    Past and present Black women are often left out of conversations about Black liberation or asked to mute their requests until Black men are fully satisfied with their stations. All of this goes on while Black women have the highest rates of maternal mortality, domestic violence and femicide. As is reported in society and the (social) media quite often, the accomplishments of Black women are either questioned or muted by a variety of other demographics, who have no problem using Black women’s ideas or labor.

    Black women are far too often viewed as support staff, but if we are lucky, we might even get our own name tag instead of having to wear someone else’s.

    Kyla Jenée Lacey is an accomplished third-person bio composer. Her spoken word has garnered tens of millions of views, and has been showcased on Pop Sugar, Write About Now, Buzzfeed, Harper’s Bizarre, Diet Prada, featured on the Tamron Hall show, and Laura Ingraham from Fox News called her work, “Anti-racist propaganda.”. She has performed spoken word at over 300 colleges in over 40 states. Kyla has been a finalist in the largest regional poetry slam in the country, no less than five times, and was nominated as Campus Activities Magazine Female Performer of the Year. Her work has been acknowledged by several Grammy-winning artists. Her poetry has been viewed over 50 million times and even used on protest billboards in multiple countries. She has written for large publications such as The Huffington Post, BET.com, and the Root Magazine and is the author of "Hickory Dickory Dock, I Do Not Want Your C*ck!!!," a book of tongue-in-cheek poems, about patriarchy....for manchildren.

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