It has been an exhausting year for Black women. From the murders of Breonna Taylor and activist Toyin Salau to the killings of Black transgender women, we have had to watch the world fail us over and over again, and in real time. And now, it’s happening again with rapper Megan Thee Stallion. In early July, the Houston artist was reportedly shot in the foot following an argument with rapper Tory Lanez. Lanez was arrested that same night on a felony charge of carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle and was later released on bond.
Meg – whose real name is Megan Pete – later wrote on her Instagram page that she had “suffered gunshot wounds, as a result of a crime that was committed against [her]” and was done with the intention to harm her. And although many of the facts of the case remain unclear, one thing is for sure; Meg hasn’t gotten the care, respect or empathy she deserves from the media or the public.
Shortly after the incident, social media users immediately began making jokes, and speculation flew about what probably transpired between the two. Despite support from some users – mostly Black women – who stood up in her defence, the episode has been largely ridiculed or simply ignored. Not only has there been little media coverage of the shooting itself, even a few public figures joined in the pile-on with crude remarks and harmful transphobic jokes.
There is a painfully obvious lack of care when we talk about violence that is perpetrated against Black women; almost like society is unable to reconcile the gravity of the violence with the humanity of its victim. Much has been made of the fact that the killers of Breonna still have not been arrested, that it took the murder of George Floyd to ignite the worldwide protests we’re seeing now even though Taylor had been killed months earlier, and that even as we speak, calls for justice for her have turned into a meme in themselves. And while all Black life remains under constant threat of state and other forms of violence, it’s clear that there is a gaping hole when it comes to consideration, accountability and retribution for Black women in particular.
In this case, Meg is also confident, successful and breaking boundaries in a male-dominated field – the kind of woman society typically doesn’t afford room for pain, vulnerability or even basic humanity. People look at an incident like this and balk at the idea that she would need or deserve the kind of concern that would be readily offered up for anyone else in her situation. And, the public indignity of watching her trauma be dissected, trivialized and turned into fodder for memes, is something she has to grapple with as well. “Black women are so unprotected,” she wrote on Twitter just days after the incident. “We hold so many things in to protect the feelings of others w/o considering our own. It might be funny to y’all on the internet and just another messy topic for you to talk about but this is my real life and I’m real life hurt and traumatized.”
It’s also not lost on me that most of the voices who have spoken up for Meg in the last few weeks are other Black women. It is us, who once again find ourselves backed into the lonely corner of simultaneously navigating a society that does not feel the need to protect us, and having to show up as advocates for others in moments like these.
I don’t know what the solution is, or what it’s going to take for the world to give Black women the respect they deserve, but it has to happen. We can’t say Black Lives Matter when Black women still exist on the margins of even that very idea. Black women remain at the vanguard of our struggles for liberation, and deserve to be fought for and protected in the same way.
Tayo Bero is a freelance journalist
