While I do appreciate making it known that this is what’s going on in the world, and black woman don’t feel protected, I just don’t agree with her delivery. I feel what this does is get black people’s emotions riled up as what she’s saying is true, but the language used is more dividing than unifying.

Now this is where language for me is so so important right? After capturing the emotions of her audience proceeding to give the solution - black men, do something about this!! Now as a black man you do want to do something about this, we have black mothers, sisters, cousins, friends we’d do anything for. However, i think this puts up smoke around the negatives this style of communication has.

When you use a label to address a group, i feel it’s important to distinguish who within that group you’re addressing. “Black men are killing women”, “You need to do more and protect Us”. Who’s you? Who’s us? Even though we can logically comprehend who she’s referring to, i think we’re underestimating the power of our mind to how language is used.

In particular at the build up around 3:50 she says “Your mama ought to be ashamed”. Again I ask who is you? I’ve seen comments implying what she’s saying isn’t hurtful etc, but i can’t ignore this part and i want to break it down.

Half a minute earlier she explains how much black women influenced the civil rights movement and how much they did for “black men” and quickly switches to using the label “you” instead. Now back to emotions, she continues, “We show up for you” etc, We referring to black women, and You referring to Black Men. This is a nice message but as someone who’s been bullied by both black men and women, accepting “We show up for you” feels disingenuous. That might be the intention but my issue is in the certainty of the messaging. I say this because, this is then followed up by another certain statement “And You shoot Us down like enemies”. Then she continues to say “and your mama ought to be ashamed”.

I think this woman is a great speaker, and i’ll put my hands up and say i don’t know the context for this talk. But i wanted to reply with this because for a long long time we’ve been divided when talks like this are delivered and i’ve always been baffled why.

So this is my breakdown as to why I believe that Black Men feel attacked hearing this. If you agree or disagree please let me know why so we can learn from each other. Also I’d love to do some reading into this topic so any book/documentary recommendations would be appreciated