siblings

When the Asphalt Bleeds

I see the world largely through the prism of women's lives, our rights and our issues. It's not, in anyway, at the exclusion of men, but I believe no matter what the struggles men have are, women are always trying to catch up, as it were. Many things have helped shape who I am today but none of them moreso than who I spent my first 51 years of life with, Sister, my only sibling. She was and continues to be the most powerful influence I've had.

There are many other women who have been changed my life in significant ways. One of these women is Lorraine, she teaches me things I've either forgotten or have never known about women. She brings the past of who women are and have been and blends it with the present, it's a gift of eloquence and sharing of knowledge I appreciate more than I can say.

That I have been invited to be a frontpager at Culture Kitchen is humbling and an honor. I thank Lorraine and Liza for that and will try my hardest to be worthy of their confidence in my writing and also in who I am, as a woman, as an American and a citizen of the world at large.

As a way to introduce myself, as a telling of how I became a Democrat and why I hold the present leaders of this party's feet to the fire is because they can do better, they must do better, they keep saying they are trying, it's time they understand it's not in the trying, it's in the doing that counts.

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Words to live by

But, when it came down to, this case was made into a racial issue, which it shouldn't have been. It should have been an issue about a woman who was raped by three men. Case closed.

The fact that she was black and they were white only plays into the fetishization of Black women and white men that has developed through years of inequal treatment. This also biased many people because it made this case into a national spectacle. It split people along racial lines instead of factual lines and investigating the story that the woman told instead of going on a witch hunt.

Additionally, this case was turned into an issue of class as well. The Black, poor woman was raped by the rich white kids. Many wanted to see these men be charged because they felt it would put them in their rightful place, strip them of the privilege that they had been so accustomed to all of their lives.

All of the things that this case stood for are all of the things that were wrong with the media's coverage of the case, the national obsession with the case, and the prosecution of the case. It became an issue of stripping privilege and proving that white people were not superior instead of ensuring that this woman was actually treated properly and had her CORRECT assailants brought to justice, not for political reasons but for criminal reasons.

— From Ace Solylent's comment over at The Smoking Gun publishes Duke Lacrosse accuser's photograph