the rallying around breonna taylor and even meg thee stallion, for a lot of people, is a lot less about protecting Black women and is a lot more about Celebrity and notoriety.

i know because the same people screaming “arrest the cops who murdered #breonnataylor” are doing so under the premise that she was asleep. these are also the same people who thought korryn gaines’s murder was justified.

the narrative around meg has become so much about what male rapper has or has not condemned tory, and whether or not meg hit him, rather than about her wellness and safety.

but idc who speaks out and idc if she did hit him. that doesn’t justify her being shot, and it doesn’t take away from the care and protection she is still deserving of.

“protect Black women” has to be more than a hashtag and social media banter. it has to mean something. and, to me, it means that all Black women deserve to be protected—even and especially the ones we can’t necessarily paint as “the perfect victim.”

“protect Black women” has to really mean inconveniencing yourself to care for the Black women your politic otherwise wouldn’t consider to be worth protecting. and it has to be more than your claim to a viral tweet.

everything becomes a social media campaign steeped in who can get to the most clout first rather than an actual reckoning with who your politic does and does not hold.

how do you show up for Black women after you hit “tweet”? and what type of Black women you showing up for?

i think so little of these social media campaigns because they don’t often translate offline. and they aren’t often separated from Desirability—which, in this case, is referring to respectability.

i’m just tired of the performance. no one’s politic is being stretched this way.

i saw folks going back and forth about whether or not rihanna hit chris brown over ten years ago, and that’s how i know “protect Black women” comes with terms & conditions.

that isn’t to justify abuse from women, but it is to say that it wouldn’t mean she deserves to be abused.

for me, “protect Black women” has to mean grace, care, and nuance. and it doesn’t require perfection from the Black woman “in need” of protection. and it doesn’t require virality to be legitimate.