I would rather be writing about something different. But because it deserves no less the attention and outcry of #Me Too and #Time’s Up, I am compelled to put my pen on the neck of this atrocity. And in unity, support, and solidarity with these and the very apropos movement, “#Mute R. Kelly”, I am naming this writing, “#Surviving the Culture of R. Kelly”.

So while I am not excusing and/or minimizing the role of R. Kelly in the destruction and devastation of the life circumstances of the many chocolate, cocoa, caramel, honey, pecan, coffee, and mocha colored children, girls and young women, my sisters, who he perpetrated, he really is not the most important figure in all of this. He is merely the named villain. However, because he is the central character, I say unequivocally and without reservation that he absolutely deserves all of the punishment that will be meted out to him for the numerous crimes he has committed. He is culpable for every act of victimization suffered at his hands and done under the guise of his artistic tutelage. And though I stand not in the stead of the moral majority, so to speak, I have been witness professionally and personally to the devastating and sometimes irreparable harm that haunts the lives of those who have been forever changed by the behavior and culture of an R. Kelly.

Because when people are violated, and especially children who are so immature and fragile, there is a shift that happens to their spirit and their psyche that they are never that same person they were before. Consequently, because children lack the sophistication of self-awareness, self-reflection and experience, they are unable to really identify or acknowledge the ramifications of what has occurred but the shift happens to them ever so profoundly even in their ignorance. So that’s why I am calling this #Surviving the Culture of R. Kelly, and that is where I will focus my attention going forward. It is for my sisters, my children, my nieces, my community of daughters that my eyes weep in grief, my heart breaks in anguish, and that I write this expression because ultimately they are me and I am them.

So as I make reference to “#Surviving The Culture of R. Kelly”, in this regard I am talking specifically about a mindset of people, bystanders and onlookers that were so enamored by the few paltry baubles they received by being in the company of this known pedophile that they did nothing in the face of unspeakable and vile sexual and psychological acts against the human dignity of little girls. They don’t deny they were right there, per the documentary, so I am only explicitly defining how they have not clearly identified themselves; as a culture of Weakling and Beggarly accomplices. That they could knowingly sit quietly and watch the dehumanization and abuse of the girls and women who they are supposed to be brothers, fathers, uncles, friends, protectors, and neighbors to gives a horrific look into an extremely sick and sickening mindset. It makes me want turn away in a cringe-worthy manner which speaks without audible utterance, “lest I see it and it be true”. But I won’t look away. I will not be silent and I won’t speak quietly. That is the culture that gave permission to the corrupt behavior. And I will vehemently voice this because “it” is true. I am not a child and I am not afraid and I will not cower from their ugliness.

Because this is the very cultural mindset that crafted the messages given to those impressionable, dreamy-eyed, and uninformed little brown, bronze, gold and copper colored girls regarding their value and worth. And while they probably didn’t consider or even comprehend it, the leeches who could have been rescuers and protectors demonstrated by their lack or valor that rescue and protection on their behalf was not a risk they were willing to take. Now that’s a Helluva message coming from these community and family symbols who willingly and willfully looked the other way when they see/saw the girl children that look/ed just like them being lured, deceived and violated. Their eyes beheld while their hearts hid and their courage ran for cover. They saw girls not just captivated but captured and held captive by the illusion of glamour when it was really a worthless shiny yet poisonous trinket.

So as much as I love men and I love my brothers, I have great and grave disappointment and disquiet toward the men who behaved so pathetically. Additionally might I make this point, No man who respected another man would have exposed the other man to his demonstration of such lewd and disrespectful behavior and treatment of others. No man who respected another man would offend the manhood of another by making him complicit in his degradation by bearing witness to it. No man who respected another man would have dared to allow that other man to see him inflict such foul and offensive acts on females, let alone children. No man who respected another man would have challenged the other to oblige and tolerate his sinful and repulsive conduct through their silence. No man who respected the other man would have expected the other to not revolt against, correct and condemn his gutter-level wickedness. He knew that for the culture of complicity to thrive, he had to surround himself with a culture of fainthearted and corruptible beings, which is probably how the entourage was formed. The culture of these base behaviors must die!!!