I first saw the petition on a posting at Feministing.com. I read the petition and decided not to sign it. I don't think anyone else ought to sign it either. There are a couple of reasons for this.
Firstly, I'm still pissed off that Obama used his return to church/father's day speech to talk shit about black men. Yes I'm well aware of, and have often commented on the absent fathers in the Black community. But Obama's speech was clearly a political ploy to get white support by showing that he's willing to "get tough" on black folk. What made that extra insulting was that he didn't seem to feel that he should have shat on black women on Mother's day, as if black women as a group have never done anything wrong at all. Ever. Yeah, OK.
Second: I was pretty much put off by the whole "black men need to...." tone of the title and resulting text. First of all I'm not responsible for R-Kelly. I don't produce his records. I don't buy his records. I don't pay the man millions to perform world wide. The fact of the matter is that a whole lot of black women love R-Kelly. In fact I would hazard to guess that black women are one of R-Kelly's primary audiences. It would seem to me then, that the onus for putting R-Kelly in his proverbial place, is on those black women who have been throwing their panties at him for all these years. But you know how it is. Always a [n-word]'s fault so I don't expect the so-called "feminist" crowd to exactly get in other women's asses for purchasing R-Kelly's music.
Third: This part probably bothered me most. There was this whole The jury ought to have convicted him because the crime was so immoral, tone to the piece I simply cannot get with the whole lets put aside jury rules attitude. If the people writing the petition are so OK with juries or jurist deciding cases regardless to the evidence (or lack thereof), then I expect them to post a petition supporting Judge Cooperman for finding that "attitude" of Sean Bell's friends, justifies ignoring the evidence that none of the officers involved in the Sean Bell shooting, were in any danger of gun fire, since they admitted a few times that they saw no gun.
This slippery, forget the law, logic raised it's head in the Duke case. All over the black female blogosphere I read material which basically said, the suspects were guilty simply because they were white, male, rich, said some really "racist" stuff and happened to be accused.
Even after evidence came to light that put one of the accused in a car, far away from the scene, one of these bloggers made a post giving the alleged victim an award for her bravery? Excuse me? I suppose then that it's OK then for black men to be judged guilty of whatever is sent their way simply because they are black, male, poor (and you KNOW how much crime poor people commit), and perhaps under-educated.
Other blog posts I have read have discussed how the rich get off because they are rich. Well no, the rich get off for a variety of reasons one of which is that they can afford adequate council. I would think that the public would be bright enough to wish that all citizens, regardless of income could get adequate council. In the R-Kelly case, Kelly had adequate council and plenty of reasonable doubt. Does that mean the man is a moral compass for black youth? No. It does mean that unlike numerous black men who have landed in prison or death row because they were simply black, R- kelly received what is commonly known as "justice." People should be happy that a jury was able to evaluate the evidence rather than make some up.
To be honest I'd be very afraid to have some of these people sit on a jury that I may end up on. In the end, the petition does nothing but lay blame for disrespect of black women in general on black men. I'm not having it. This problem did not start with only black men and it wont end with blame shifting or scapegoating.
(17 years of informed commentary)