Newspaper Page Text
Monday, October 14
THE MAROON TIGER
PAGE 14
A Brother Responds to Black Rape
Black Rape•
I got f*cked & it wasn't no thang,
just a trip 'tween a boy 'n girl,
some p*ssy & c*ck disease
colonized our bodies,
made him take me down in an alley,
the knife still in his hand.
Just some man-woman thang,
take it like a woman,
take it like a white woman
raped by a white man,
not racially related, not culturally relevant,
take it like a woman,
b*tch.
'Sides, black men are under
a lotta pressure I'm told,
got good cause to act it out.
'Sides, black boys got decent
reason to explode so
I got humped by a brother
& the sickness sucked up my c*nt:
I wished for a demented Caucasian,
Give me a clean hate,
I wasted a wish to make the c*ck white,
make the swallowing a smoother acceptable
kind of political pain.
Michelle T. Clinton
• "Black Rape" from High/Blood Pressure. Copyright © 1986 by Michelle T. Collins.
Reprinted by permission of West End Press.
Tell me this brothers: Which element of Michelle Clinton's poem do you find more offensive;
the poet's rather liberal use of coarse language, or the thematic indictment of a black man's
"justifiable" violation of his sister? As a collective, we tend to focus on words with such intensity
that we pass over the actions which those words describe. Before the word "nigger" falls fully
from between a white man's lips, it has pierced our consciousness and seared through our
emotional walls. We are so absorbed with the word-that we ignore the violence that generally
follows its utterance. So it is with Clinton's' piece, a poem whose language may drown shallow
brothers in words that collectively demonstrate that sexist abuse within our community is twice
as destructive as sexism outside of it.
As I put the period on the end of my last sentence, I immediately envisioned a distinct socio
political faction lunging for my throat with threats and catcalls based on my impropriety. In
mainstream America, "the player" is seen as outdated, chauvinistic, and perhaps even barbaric,
but in the context of the African American masculine body politic, THE correct thing to be IS a
player. One of the main properties of playerism is domination of AT LEAST one woman,
emotionally, financially, or sexually, with emphasis placed on the maintenance of a 3:1 ratio of
female dependence to male emotional attachment. The "true" player doesn't give a f*ck
In my mind's eye, I see swarms of angry men temporarily losing their effervescent cool and
complaining bitterly with all the eloquence a southern twang can produce: "Ay dog, why you
playa hatin'?" But, brothers, what is a player who doesn't make the rules? The answer: A
delusioned pawn. While words wrap feeble minds into tired frenzies, incapable of comprehension,
messages dip deeply into conscience and produce unmitigated flavor. The flav of Clinton's message
is this (and brothers pay close attention): gendercide is GENOCIDE; the socio-spiritual implications
of the disrespect in its infinite forms that we display towards our sisters is COUNTER-
revolutionary. When rap artist Too Short screams "BITCH" for all the world to hear, he has robbed
you of 15 bucks for the privilege of reinforcing the image of a chocolate sex toy with a pulse, AND
he's made the distributor of his records, a company NOT based in Rwanda I bet, some extra loot.
The translation: Somewhere a white man is getting paid every time we buy into the objectification
of our mothers, sisters, and daughters.
You think Clinton's piece is about the rape of a sister? Wrong. It is the poetic declaration, a
public admittance that her brothers have cognitively bent over and been mind f-cked. Some of
my peers turned to this page, saw the title, and figured that I would be responding to what is
rapidly becoming known as "The Incident." My take on it is that there is one absolute truth about
what transpired on September 28th, and no one knows that truth but the parties involved and
God. Whether the brothers are innocent or guilty is of no consequence to the fact that the mentality
still exists. Some of us heard about the incident and rather than condemn the POSSIBILITY of the
act of rape, we mentally re-played the scenario over in our minds, putting ourselves in the man's
position, feeling no guilt because in the image, she didn't even THINK about saying no. Call me
a player hater; I embrace that title openly. The game you play, the inspiration for figurative and
literal "Black Rape," is costing us precious time in a much larger struggle. Liberation will not
come to a divided people. —Marc Joseph, Editor-In-Chief