Black Woman Walking

I just found this video clip today & I am glad that there is another place women have been able to share their street harassment stories and experiences. It reinforces that this is a real problem for soo many women! And this video clip brings in some of the complexities of race that intersect with so much of street harassment.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Administrator. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to Black Woman Walking

  1. jazine says:
    October 16, 2008 at 11:17 am

    Thank you for providing this blog. This topic is silent because dealing with it can leave you overwhelmed and hopeless. I believe if we bring this to a public forum continuously, we can see some positive results. Thank you again.

  2. a.k. says:
    October 20, 2008 at 7:34 pm

    Tahnk you so much Tracey Rose for making Black Woman Walking. Bless you! I didn’t know that black women like you, with the gumption to reveal the truth about black women harassed on the street by black men even existed!

    I really was never sure if other black women had been on harassed verbally and sometimes physically on the street especially by black men, or whether it was only me. Because when I have spoken to some black girls and women about this some of them shrug it off when it happens to them , and they imply that I should let my experiences of that kind bother me when they happen to me.

    I wish only more black women would grow ‘cojones’ and talk about the rampant sexism, misogyny, and harassment that comes from black men because if you do not love and respect yourself, who will? You can’t always look at other people who look like you, who share your phenotypes, and assume that they will always treat you well and never mean you any real harm! That’s riduculous!

    I wish that black women would get together and unify against sexism and misogyny that happens to them publicly and outloud and stand up for other blackwomen and girls who may have been molested, attacked by rapists and pedophiles, including the very famous pedophiles such as R. Kelly and Gary Glitter.

    Black women should put REAL pressure on law enforcement up to the FBI level and the mass media news to create awareness and create news stories of kidnapped black women and girls who maybe alive or dead, and may be raped, sold into prostitution, and beaten. In 2008 these missing black women and girls’ faces should be kept in the news just like all the other victims!

    The Feminism train pulled out for white women about 40 years ago, and this train has serviced them well! We deserve to get on that same train but we like fools decided not to get on that train and get ALL of our justice. Black women were going on like we were just ‘black men lite’ not acknowledging the rights to our own womanhood! Ridiculous.

    But black women it’s never too late. Jump on that NOW train, because getting on 40 years later is better than never jumping on it at all and never fighting for your full value and and full justice.

  3. Golden Silence says:
    October 21, 2008 at 8:19 pm

    (I’ve been having problems with WordPress all day, so if this is a duplicate I apologize.)

    When I had my anti-street harassment blog, Don’t Be Silent (it’s still online but I no longer accept submissions), I and a few others posted stories about being harassed on the streets by Black men. I tried not to lump all Black men under the category of “harasser,” but I’ve had too many incidents for my tastes. I’ve been harassed by men of all races and walks of life, but I feel that Black men targeted me the worst. They’ll refer to me by my skin shade (“Yo, Lightskinned!”), refer to me as “Shawty” or “Boo” (as if my simply being Black means I’d talk like that or want to be around people like that), and get extremely nasty if I rejected them or told them to leave me alone, as if I were obligated to give them the time of day simply for being the same race. They’d call me a “sellout,” “stuck up lightskinned bitch,” and tell me to cut off my dreadlocks if I rejected their advances. These same men called me their “sista” and “Nubian Queen,” but they surely don’t treat me as such.

    The HollaBack sites have a rule about race and harassment as a way to prevent unjust discrimination, but in this case the race/class intersection is hard to ignore.

    a.k., sites for Black women like The CW Experience and What About Our Daughters? have linked the video to their blogs and feel the same way. I agree, Black women need to rally together to put an end to this nonsense.

  4. KayJay says:
    October 22, 2008 at 10:49 pm

    This is my EVERY DAY and it has always annoyed, disappointed, embarrassed, angered, frustrated, belittled and saddened me.

    Thank you for this post.

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