“A tree is best measured when it is down,” the poet Carl Sandburg once observed, “and so it is with people.” The recent death of Harry Belafonte at the age of 96 has prompted many assessments of what this pioneering singer-actor-activist accomplished in a long and fruitful life.
Belafonte’s career as a ground-breaking entertainer brought him substantial wealth and fame; according to Playbill magazine, “By 1959, he was the highest paid Black entertainer in the industry, appearing in raucously successful engagements in Las Vegas, New York, and Los Angeles.” He scored on Broadway, winning a 1954 Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Musical – John Murray Anderson's Almanac. Belafonte was the first Black person to win the prestigious award. A 1960 television special, “Tonight with Belafonte,” brought him an Emmy for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Musical Program or Series, making him the first Black person to win that award. He found equal success in the recording studio, bringing Calypso music to the masses via such hits as “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and “Jamaica Farewell.”
Harry Belafonte - Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) (Live)www.youtube.com
Belafonte’s blockbuster stardom is all the more remarkable for happening in a world plagued by virulent systemic racism. Though he never stopped performing, by the early 1960s he’d shifted his energies to the nascent Civil Right movement. He was a friend and adviser to the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. and, as the New York Times stated, Belafonte “put up much of the seed money to help start the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was one of the principal fund-raisers for that organization and Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that “he helped launch one of Mississippi’s first voter registration drives and provided funding for the Freedom Riders. His activism extended beyond the U.S. as he fought against apartheid alongside Nelson Mandela and Miriam Makeba, campaigned for Mandela’s release from prison, and advocated for famine relief in Africa.” And in 1987, he received an appointment to UNICEF as a goodwill ambassador.
Over a career spanning more than seventy years, Belafonte brought joy to millions of people. He also did something that is, perhaps, even greater: he fostered the hope that a better world for all could be created. And, by his example, demonstrated how we might go about bringing that world into existence.
Joe Biden Has Officially Been Accused of Sexual Assault
Time's Up, one of the largest organizations fighting against sexual assault, says they can't help the alleged victim.
Content warning: the following article contains a brief depiction of sexual assault.
For the entirety of his run in the 2020 presidential race (and much of his decades-long career), Joe Biden hasn't had the best track record regarding his treatment of women.
The former vice president, who's earned a shocking lead in the Democratic primaries thus far, has racked up multiple accusations from women who say he was inappropriate towards them. Many of these recounts involve a disregard for personal space, improper comments about appearance, and even some condescending finger-wagging, but none of them explicitly depicted a sexual assault. Until now.
Tara Reade didn't initially go public with her sexual assault story about Joe Biden when it allegedly occurred in 1993. A staff assistant of Biden's at the time, Reade told her brother and close friend but otherwise kept her story silent. But, in an episode recently aired of Katie Halper's podcast, Reade has finally let her story out in the world.
Reade says that she was called to bring a gym bag to Biden, who was Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, near the Capitol. Nobody else was around. "We were alone, and it was the strangest thing," Reade said. "There was no exchange, really. He just had me up against the wall." In what seemed like one swift motion, she added, Biden had his hands under her clothes and then began penetrating her digitally. "I pulled back, and he said, 'Come on, man, I heard you liked me'...It's like he implied that I had done this."
Reade tried to come forward with her story in April 2019, but she was halted after her claims of sexual harassment got her doxxed and smeared as a Russian agent. In January of this year, Reade tried again telling her story to Time's Up, the organization that rose as Hollywood's initial #MeToo movement unfolded. However, as Ryan Grim reports in The Intercept, Time's Up couldn't provide assistance "because Biden was a candidate for federal office, and assisting a case against him, Time's Up said, could jeopardize the organization's nonprofit status."
Reade told Grim she was conflicted about coming forward with her sexual assault allegation as the 2020 election carried on because she feared she'd be "help[ing] Trump" win over Biden. But, if our two presidential front-runners are both men accused of sexual assault, and one of the largest organizations intended to help survivors can't help at all, there's a much larger issue than simply defeating Trump: It's how we handle assault at the hands of the world's most powerful men.
What Millennials and Older Generations Need to Realize About Political Correctness
We're all getting something wrong when we view political correctness as fundamentally opposed to free speech.
Few issues have divided the nation further than the free speech vs. political correctness debate.
In addition to deepening the gap between conservatives and liberals, the debate tends to fracture the left, leading to dissent from the inside. This stems in part from the fact that many older liberals simply can't wrap their minds around the idea of political correctness.
Political Correctness: Censorship or Part of the Fight for Equality?
Critics of political correctness equate it to censorship, which they see as a threat to the all-American ideal of unbridled freedom. For most liberal millennials and Gen-Z kids, however, political correctness is about freedom, just of a different sort. It's really about shutting down hate speech and supporting marginalized communities.
Nowhere did this divide become clearer than in one of my lectures in college, a postmodernism class with a professor who I'd always seen as uniquely brilliant (and who also happened to teach a lesbian erotica class). She lost a lot of my respect when—as a white woman—she insisted that there was nothing really wrong with a white person saying the "n" word in solitude, prompting one of the few people of color in the class to raise her hand and ask: "Why are white people so desperate to say that one word?" The professor responded with a lecture about free speech and the insubstantiality of language, a response that felt misguided and totally out of touch.
This generational divide appeared again when prominent feminist and author Margaret Atwood published an op-ed critiquing the #MeToo movement. "My fundamental position is that women are human beings, with the full range of saintly and demonic behaviours this entails, including criminal ones," she wrote. "They're not angels, incapable of wrongdoing." In short, Atwood was critiquing the #MeToo movement for the same reason that many people critique political correctness. They feel that restricting one's language, or giving the benefit of the doubt to and prioritizing the voices of certain demographics, is infantilizing or threatening to other demographics' freedoms.
On the other hand, many young liberals understand that political correctness is an important part of the process of giving respect to groups that have been and are still systematically oppressed. This political correctness can take the form of prioritizing people of color's voices, or calling out offensive speech—even, or especially, when it's the product of ignorance, or when it's conducted out of earshot of the people it might hurt.
What Toni Morrison Knew: Political Correctness and Free Speech Can Be the Same Thing
What we all need to understand is that, among other things, the left's internal war over political correctness and free speech actually presents a chance for generations to learn from each other. Defenders of political correctness might realize that sometimes, accidentally offensive language can present a valuable educational opportunity—though this is definitely not always the case, and no one should be required to educate others about why they deserve basic respect.
Older proponents of free speech, for their part, can realize that political correctness, safe spaces, and the like ultimately come from places of compassion. At their core, they are efforts to achieve a more equitable world.
Perhaps it's too starry-eyed to imagine that older allies could learn from younger people who refuse to accept middle-of-the-road policies or veiled racism, but some older people have certainly embraced progressive worldviews. "Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge," said Toni Morrison in a 1993 address about political correctness. Morrison, whose wisdom stretched far beyond the blind spots of her generation, was a supporter of what political correctness stands for, though not of the implications of that specific term. In a later interview, she added, "I believe that powerful, sharp, incisive, critical, bloody, dramatic, theatrical language is not dependent on injurious language, on curses. Or hierarchy."
In short, freedom of speech is not contingent on the ability to use offensive language. We can be free—in fact, we can only be free—when all of us are free, which will only happen when language that demonizes or injures certain groups is purged from acceptable discourse.
Ironically, the book we were discussing that day in my postmodernism class was Morrison's Beloved.
Image via the Washington Post
What Some French Women Misunderstand About #MeToo
100 prominent French women have signed an open letter arguing that the #MeToo movement has gone too far.
The #MeToo movement, first sparked by allegations against Hollywood heavyweights like Harvey Weinstein, has shown Americans just how many of us are survivors of sexual violence. Not only did #MeToo empower women to talk about our experiences with abuse and harassment, but it also inspired many employers to work toward creating a safer, more equitable workplace.
Most Americans appeared to be receptive to this revelation, but apparently the same can't be said for the French. At least that's how it seemed after a group of 100 prominent French women signed an open letter in the French newspaper Le Monde in January of this year, calling the movement a "hatred of men and sexuality."
French actress Catherine DeneuveThe Guardian
On top of their claims that it's anti-men, these women noted that #MeToo attempts to make seduction shameful and frames women as "eternal victims." Among the co-signers were actress Catherine Deneuve, Catherine Millet, who authored a best-selling novel about sex, and conservative women like Elisabeth Lévy, editor of Causeur magazine.
Part of the letter reads: "As women, we do not recognize ourselves in this feminism, which goes beyond denouncing abuse of power and has turned into a hatred of men and of sexuality … Rape is a crime, but trying to seduce someone, even awkwardly, is not. Nor is being gallant a macho aggression ...
"It is the nature of puritanism to borrow, in the name of the supposed collective good, the arguments of the protection of women and of their emancipation to better chain them to their status as eternal victims; poor little things under the control of demonic phallocrats, like in the good old days of witchcraft."
It is here that I, as an American feminist, take issue with their fundamental misunderstanding of #MeToo — and survivorship.
For most of us in the United States, it's hard to find fault in something that feels so pure. Women live their lives with the awareness that there are men who want to hurt us. They're in our families, our friend groups, workplaces, and even among strangers. For many of us, it feels good to talk about our experiences and fears out loud.
The idea that asking to be treated better, to be seen as more than sexual objects for men to attempt to "conquer," turns us into perennial victims is absurd. The only thing that turns a woman into a victim is an abuser making the choice to harm her. In that vein, the only thing that makes women seem like we are always victims is the astounding prevalence of sexual violence, abuse, and harassment put upon us by abusers and a culture that excuses them.
This thinking also proposes that a fundamental aspect of femininity is being desired, while masculinity is inextricably tied to pursuit. This is a dangerous binary for women, and a limiting one for men.
When we expect that seduction is a natural part of how men interact with women, we place a massive burden upon women. Implying that men have some fundamental right to try to seduce us asks us to endure unwanted, inappropriate, and sometimes illegal sexual interaction. It places no responsibility upon men to control themselves or to even have empathy for the women they're trying to seduce. This type of thinking places more value upon men's right to seduce us than our right to feel safe and be treated as equals.
See, my husband has never had to worry about sexual harassment in the workplace. He's been working different jobs for 35 years, but he's never once considered how an outfit he is about to put on might cause his colleagues to sexually harass him. He's never worried that he might have to endure uncomfortable, inappropriate come-ons in order to keep his job.
In contrast, I've worried about these things in every male-dominated job I've ever had. In fact, my first experience with sexual harassment in the workplace happened when I was only 17 years-old. My boss was in his forties. I didn't report it or even tell my parents, because I believed it was normal for men to behave that way.
I'm far from alone. While there is a glaring need for more research in this area, one study determined that 81% of women have been sexually harassed. For generations, we have been taught — either overtly by our parents and teachers or implicitly through our own experiences — that being harassed is the price we pay for being in the workplace, school, or out in the world.
Teenage girls in school are groped, catcalled, and harassed by boys in classrooms and hallways. Sexist dress code policies imply that their bodies tempt boys into distraction, suggesting that boys simply cannot control themselves. Most women and girls have dealt with stalking, harassment, and sometimes even outright violence from strangers attempting to "seduce" them on the street.
The French women who wrote the open letter against #MeToo mention that many of the stories in this movement haven't featured an imbalance of power, as was the case with Harvey Weinstein. These French women make clear that they are against rape or men who abuse their power. But if you ask me, unwanted sexual attention from any man — whether he's your boss, classmate, or just a guy on the street — can feel like an abuse of power.
In our society, men, particularly white men, naturally hold positions of power over women. This begins with the fact that men are often physically larger and stronger; but, additionally, men are also more likely to be police officers, security guards, judges, and even legislators. So while the man or boy who harasses you may not necessarily hold formal power of you, he will likely evade prosecution due to the fact that he's part of a system designed to protect men.
Of course, there are exceptions to this rule of power when it comes to intersecting privileges. For instance, a white woman accusing a Black man of rape or violence holds an extraordinary amount of power. Despite the fact that 90% of rapes happen intra-racially (wherein the victim and perpetrator are of the same race), the disparaging stereotype that Black men are sexually violent toward white women has proven to be deadly for Black men and boys, resulting in staggering rates of wrongful convictions and vigilante violence.
Such was the case for Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who was accused of making sexual advances towards a white woman in 1955 and subsequently lynched. According to one historian, the white woman in question admitted in 2008 that she had lied about the boy touching her or talking suggestively. Of course, by then, it was decades too late.
Still, considering that the majority of sexual violence occurs between individuals of the same racial group, the men who choose to harm women generally hold more societal power than women do. This creates a scary world for women who wish to report their abusers or harassers.
Considering how likely men are to protect one another, asking the world to become a safer place for women doesn't present us as "eternal victims," as the French dissenters propose. It simply demands that women be treated as equal members of society, with the same freedoms to move through the world safely and free of harassment that men possess. And despite what the French #MeToo dissenters may have expected, the movement seems to have helped French women.
Protest in FranceThe Atlantic
According to a report by France24, "Reports of sexual violence surged between 23 and 30 percent in October 2017 from the year before...The increased number of complaints has been widely attributed to the movement for encouraging victims to speak out." France has also enacted a new law that makes street harassment illegal, which has led to the successful prosecution of a man who called a woman a "whore" on the street and groped her buttocks. The man was fined and was sentenced to time in jail, becoming the first person convicted for "sexist insults" in France.
None of this is to say that #MeToo is the end of romance, either. Rather, it proposes that men can do better than seducing women in a way that makes them feel scared or uncomfortable. After all, most men don't want to make women feel unsafe, and plenty understand that it's not "seduction" when you have to convince someone to want you — it's coercion.
Asking for equal access to work, schooling, and public spaces does not make us weak. In fact, standing up against the notion that men have the right to harass, assault, or even try to seduce us — awkwardly or not — is the epitome of strength, and it's sad that the French women who signed the letter don't understand that.
A Second Woman Accuses Kavanaugh of Sexual Misconduct
This incident reportedly took place during Kavanaugh's Freshman year at Yale University.
Brett Kavanaugh and The White House have publicly denied a second woman's claims of sexual misconduct by the Supreme Court nominee. This allegation comes in the wake of negotiators reaching a decision to hold a hearing to investigate the claims of Kavanaugh's first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. In light of the new accusation, the top Democrat on the senate judiciary committee, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, called for immediate postponement of Kavanaugh's confirmation process. In a letter to Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley., Sen. Feinstein asked that the matter be referred to the FBI for investigation.
The new allegation dates back to the 1983-84 school year, when Kavanaugh was a freshman at Yale University. Deborah Ramirez, Kavanaugh's classmate at Yale at the time, was contacted by The New Yorker after the allegation was relayed to Democratic senators by a civil-rights lawyer. She was originally reluctant to share the story, in part because she had been drinking at the party in question and felt she had some gaps in her memory of the night. After several days of assessing her recollection with her attorney, she said she felt certain enough of the memory to describe it in an interview with The New Yorker.
The New Yorker reports, "Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away."
Ramirez recalled being shaken by the event. "I wasn't going to touch a penis until I was married," she said. "I was embarrassed and ashamed and humiliated." The New Yorker reported that Ramirez "...remembers Kavanaugh standing to her right and laughing, pulling up his pants. 'Brett was laughing.' she said. 'I can still see his face, and his hips coming forward, like when you pull up your pants.'" She also stated that another student "yelled down the hall, 'Brett Kavanaugh just put his penis in Debbie's face.'" She remarked, "It was his full name. I don't think it was just 'Brett.' And I remember hearing and being mortified that this was out there."
Regarding the incident, Ramirez said, "I would think an FBI investigation would be warranted."
Brett Kavanaugh in the Yale Yearbookwhitehouse.gov
In response to Ramirez's allegation, the White House spokesperson Kerri Kupec stated, "This 35-year-old, uncorroborated claim is the latest in a coordinated smear campaign by the Democrats designed to tear down a good man. This claim is denied by all who were said to be present and is wholly inconsistent with what many women and men who knew Judge Kavanaugh at the time in college say. The White House stands firmly behind Judge Kavanaugh."
It has been confirmed that four Democratic senators have received information about Ramirez's allegation, and at least two are investigating the matter further. Ramirez will not be appearing at Kavanaugh's hearing on Thursday.
Brooke Ivey Johnson is a Brooklyn based writer, playwright, and human woman. To read more of her work visit her blog or follow her twitter @BrookeIJohnson.
How Has Clarence Thomas Survived the #MeToo Movement?
What the campaign against sexual harassment has revealed about past allegations against the Supreme Court justice.
Since 1991, Clarence Thomas has served as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court with a lifetime term.
Yet shortly before his nomination to the post, Anita Hill testified before a Senate committee that Thomas had sexually harassed her for three years at two different government organizations where they had worked together. Nearly three decades before #MeToo, Hill's testimony was the first major public allegation and investigation into sexual harassment in the workplace. It sparked a divisive discussion about harassment, power, trust and culpability across the country.
After detailing her experiences to the committee, Hill nonetheless watched Thomas win his nomination to the Supreme Court that same year. It was a position where he would have, among other responsibilities, authority over the rights and privileges of women under the Constitution for decades to come.
In February of this year, as part of the mighty wave of women's voices rising against sexual harassment and toppling the men who used it as a tool of power against them, several women brought Clarence Thomas back into the discussion and under the fierce light of the #MeToo movement. With the renewed attention also came calls for impeachment and evidence to support the push.
During the 1991 hearings, it was Anita Hill's word against that of soon-to-be-Justice Thomas.
In 1981, Hill was working for Thomas at the Department of Education when the harassment began. She described to the committee Thomas's attempts to ask her out and the numerous times he talked explicitly about sex acts at work. He later convinced her to move with him to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.
The harassment continued at the EEOC. Thomas described to Hill the pornographic videos he watched and disclosed to her his preferences for specific parts of female bodies. In 1983, Hill escaped the harassment by moving to Oklahoma to teach law. Finally, in 1991, she brought her experiences to the attention of a Senate prepared to nominate Thomas to the Supreme Court.
Anita Hill stepped in front of an audience of hundreds of millions and described what she suffered working for Thomas. And Thomas took his Supreme Court seat later that year. "I was disappointed but not surprised," Hill said.
Hill was alone on the stand during the 1991 hearings though others had been willing to testify alongside her.
"Four African-American women, including me, were willing to join professor Hill and testify about Thomas' behavior," wrote Angela Wright-Shannon in February. "We all were denied a voice." Without social media, these testimonies were simply never heard. Wright-Shannon recently described for the Huffington Post her own similar experiences with Thomas: he repeatedly asked her to date him and asked about her breast size.
Another belated testimony came from Lillian McEwen, Thomas's ex-girlfriend. "The Clarence I know was certainly capable not only of doing the things that Anita Hill said he did, but it would be totally consistent with the way he lived his personal life then," she said in an interview in 2010. The #MeToo environment of 2018 has allowed women to come forward together, in force, against the men who harassed them. Jill Abramson believes #MeToo might have allowed others to join Hill on the stand against Thomas and shifted the balance of credibility toward the victims.
After the recent months of accusations, resignations and lettings-go achieved by #MeToo, Thomas's ascension following his hearing and the existence of any subsequent career for him seem ridiculous. How could he have been appointed and how is he still a Justice? Yet, the President of the United States won his election and continues to hold power despite the infamous circumstances of his own history of harassment.
"How do you remove sexual predators from office when all attempts to prevent their ascension in the first place failed?" asks Wright-Shannon. The answer, according to Abramson, is perjury.
Since 1989, three federal judges have been impeached for charges including lying. Among the leaked documents of Hillary Clinton in 2016 was a "Memo on Impeaching Clarence Thomas," written in 2010, that assembles evidence of his perjury. Abramson's article details some of the lies he told, under oath, in front of the Senate Committee and Anita Hill, about the harassment—lies that can now be confirmed as such by the testimony of other victims. The #MeToo movement offers the possibility of strength in numbers that was lacking during the original hearings but that could now present significant corroboration to the perjury claim.
Wright-Shannon, Rose Jourdain and Sukari Hardnett were all victims willing to offer their stories to the Senate committee but didn't get the chance. Now, they and others can fight back.
In the fall of 2016, Moira Smith, an attorney, wrote a Facebook post about the night Clarence Thomas groped her at a dinner party in 1999. He squeezed her butt several times while she was setting the table and asked her to sit next to him. After finally making the incident public on Facebook, it also became the subject of an article in the National Law Journal.
The case for the impeachment of Thomas centers, currently, on his perjury during the 1991 hearings.
But Moira's account of his sexual misconduct at the dinner occurred when he was already a Supreme Court Justice, a detail that could add fuel to the impeachment push.
The current U.S. President secured his victory over the accusations of sexual misconduct by nineteen women, an event that is startlingly similar to Thomas's nomination after Anita Hill's testimony twenty-seven years ago. But since the election, the #MeToo movement has risen up in fury against men guilty of harassing women and has begun to secure justice for the victims. Now, more than ever, the circumstances seem to be prime for the impeachment of a justice guilty of sexual misconduct and perjury.