Dunbar Village All Over Again

.
I saw this post over at Black Women Vote blog! A 20 year old (just starting her life, okay?!) gets ambushed and dragged into her home. The man proceeded to rape her, despite her cries for help.

To make matters worse, the neighbors all hear her cries and don't lift a finger --not even to call the police. The rapist, realizing that nobody's coming to her aid, calls up his buddies to come join him in raping the poor girl!

To add to the injury AND the insult, these shameless neighbors BOLDLY admit to this to the reporters!

Where do I begin?

GUARDING THE EYES

One of the harshest thing about being sexually immoral, is that the world can basically leave you alone once you've gone down that rabbit hole. The person who succumbs to immoral sexual behavior -according to the sages- creates their own demon, their own problems, and no one needs to make matters worse for them. It just happens.

I think that may be one of the problems that the media is infusing in the BC. So much BET, so much MTV, so much imagery of over sexualized acts, behaviors, images. Its wreaking havock in the minds of the viewers. What are people who view these things -people who actually grow up on it- what do they become?

Can anyone tell the BC to turn off their TV? I mean unless it becomes BC friendly, or at least BW friendly, which most can attest to -IT IS NOT- why burden oneself with it? And for what? to get yet another survey or study of how bad things are? To see yet another sister, mother, cousin, daughter girating to some music? These only create lust in a person.

"Rabbi Elazar Hakapar said, Three things take a man out of the world: jealousy, lust and the desire for honor" "(Pirkei Avot 4:28).



When someone has any of these traits, they are seeing the world in a skewed way. Thus, they are not in reality.

Granted, when times are tough, its a great babysitter. But try a computer (if the kids are so little that they'll sit to watch the program you give them) try watch-movie.net, something other than BET, MTV, etc.

Guarding one's eyes also has another benefit that can get lost if not attended to -the loss of the imagination.

The ability to fantasize about a great BW heroine who can save the day...

The ability to fantasize about a BM who's an undercover agent

The ability to fantasize about another world entirely -perhaps made up of black folks with quirks or something.

The ability to just step out of reality, and stretch the mind for when one returns back to reality.

When I read stories about Black folks, its usually factual. I miss the old rap. The old funny, made up stories that used to be said in those music. I want the black imagination back.

VICTIM AVERSION

Nobody likes to be the victim. And sometimes it seems that when a BW is being gang raped and nobody heeds her cries, I wonder if its an attempt to distance oneself from the "mirror". That eerie realization that 'that could be me'ness. I wonder if the neighbors cutting themselves off from feeling anything for that poor girl is an attempt to not feel like a victim themselves?

But the reality is that that could have been anyone of them! This reality must be faced and fought. The only problem is it requires imagination to develop a solution to fight this -something that is slowly being taken away.

By infusing the black media with so much sexualized imagery, so, so much damage is being done.

THE SHAMELESS NEIGHBORS

Now for this, I really don't know what to think, what to say, nor what to do! That is simply a slipping away of humanity. Something very basic is missing there. God help those neighbors.