Go to Hell, Mel

There he goes again, this time without the excuse of alcohol addiction: Mel Gibson is revealed to be a misogynist and a racist. This time, he warns his “baby mama” Oksana Grigorieva that, given how she’s dressed, she deserves to be raped and risks being raped by a bunch of black men. Well, “black men” is not the term he used, but I won’t dignify what he said by repeating it verbatim.

When, oh when, will America stop making black men into sexually predatory boogeymen who have this uncontrollable desire to rape white women? I thought that was soo last millennium.

I am the aunt and great-aunt to a good number of African American boys. They should not be considered, just by virtue of their existence, to be a threat to the sexual integrity of white women, or any women for that matter. For hundreds of years in this country, black men died at the hands of the “raped white woman” lie. I take it seriously when someone gives life to the lie that black men lie in wait in hopes of raping scantily clad white women who, in Mel Gibson’s book, would probably deserve such treatment. Mind you, Jack Johnson and Eldridge Cleaver did nothing to dispel this myth, but then again, that was last millennium.

Second, I don’t care if a woman, no matter her race, is walking butt-naked in the middle of Times Square: No woman “deserves” to be raped, no matter who she is, no matter what she does, no matter how she dresses. Call me an old school feminist on this one, but I still believe in “’No’ means ‘no’.” Rape has increasingly become not only a tool to suppress and oppress individual women, but a tool of war waged against the women of entire countries. I take it seriously when the words are uttered that a woman “deserved” to be raped.

Finally, with all due respect to my melanin-challenged sisters, white women are not the epitome in beauty and the sexual “brass ring” for all black men. Many men in my family are no more attracted to white women than they are gay. That’s not to say that they find white women physically repulsive by virtue of their race; it just means that they are drawn to women who have the physical attributes and cultural experiences of our shared race. In other words, there aren’t these mythical packs of black men roaming the streets in hopes of raping white women as some sort of "achievement," although insecure white men like Mel Gibson would like you to think there are.

So, on behalf of my male ancestors and relatives, all of the black men falsely accused and lynched for raping white women, and women of the world, I say to Mel Gibson, “Go to hell.”