Beyond Superwoman: Justice For Black Women Too

[marmar]

from Dissent magazine:


Beyond Superwoman: Justice For Black Women Too
By Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd - Winter 2014


On June 18, 2007, Tommy Poindexter coaxed a woman out of her apartment in West Palm Beach, Florida by telling her that her car had a flat. Then he and nine other young black men forced her back into her home in the Dunbar Village public housing community, where they not only robbed her but engaged in three hours of rape, beatings, and torture. The female victim, a Haitian immigrant, was raped vaginally, orally, and anally, sometimes with bottles or a firearm, while they beat her twelve-year-old son in another room. In an effort to cover up their crimes, they told both the woman and her son to clean off and then forced the mother and son to have sex with each other. Finally, the assailants poured alcohol into the woman’s anus, ammonia on both her and her son’s eyes, stuffed a bar of soap into the woman’s vagina, and tried to light the mother and child on fire as they lay naked in a bathtub.

This horrific crime gained little media attention outside the West Palm Beach area. Sadly, black political leaders assisted in that neglect. Instead of rallying to the aid of the woman and her child, the Reverend Al Sharpton and officials from the Palm Beach chapter of the NAACP appeared at a press conference with the defendants’ families. They argued it was unfair not to offer bail to the men, citing a rape case involving white defendants in another Florida jurisdiction, men who had drugged and raped two underage women. Fliers were passed out at the press conference that portrayed the defendants as “voiceless, vulnerable, victims” and “Young African-American Males [who are] An Endangered Species.” Richard McIntyre, communications director for the national office of the NAACP, told a writer for the blog What About Our Daughters that “black on black crime is not part of our mission.”

Eventually, both Sharpton and the NAACP revised their positions, but only after being lambasted in the black feminist blogosphere. One critic, Shecodes, whose open letter was posted at What About Our Daughters, voiced the concerns of other bloggers: “Right-thinking black people everywhere are stunned by the recent betrayal of Al Sharpton and the NAACP in a situation that is just too outrageous to ignore.” Other bloggers added that both Sharpton and the leading civil rights group should “interpret this protest as a golden opportunity for critical self reflection, as a new line of dialogue, and as a chance to move into better alignment with the will of the very people that they exist to serve.”

To date, despite the best efforts of those who tried to bring this case to light, only four of the ten assailants have been charged, tried, and sentenced. The mother and son will be struggling to heal from that ghastly day for the rest of their lives. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/beyond-superwoman-justice-for-black-women-too

[OldEurope]

1. No words

[Heather MC]

2. OMG They survived that???????

This is really telling the state our country is in when a story like this gets little press, but Super Bowl Commercials are discussed for a week or more