What About Our Daughters?: 22 y.o. Black Woman to 11 year-old Black Girl Gang Raped By 20 Men and boys: "That girl, knew What She Was Doing"#links

What About Our Daughters?: 22 y.o. Black Woman to 11 year-old Black Girl Gang Raped By 20 Men and boys: "That girl, knew What She Was Doing"#links

I read about this and wanted to simultaneously throw up and cocoon my two daughters!

I am sick to my stomach about the behavior of our black men and our black women in the poor neighborhoods.

It is timing in a way that I came across this post after (1) spending my Saturday with a couple girls I mentor who live in a poor neighborhood, (2) watching the HBO documentary about Douglass High School in Baltimore MD, and (3) thinking about Come on People by Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin Pouissant.

What is wrong with us!!!!!!!! I am a member of this black community. I don't want to be. The color of my skin makes me part of it, but I don't want to be right now. I hate this!

Rape is so brutal and then to have it happen to an 11-yar-old. Where are the real men to stand up and protect this baby? Where are the real men who will beat the crap out of the offenders? Why the black women like the 16-year-old who organized this rape and the 22-year-old who blamed the victim are allowed to go free baffles me! I don't want my daughters anywhere near them.

I was sharing with my son, age 14, my feelings and thoughts about the ignorance of some of our people. He told me I was "stereotyping mom." After reading this and other posts recently, I'm not stereotyping. I think this is one of the things that has kept Al Sharpton and other so-called black leaders silent, the misbelief that black men are victims of the white men! No, white men did not engage in this depravity! Black men did!

God help us. From Africa to America, some black people are the worse of humanity. We have to stop this!

Eric Michael Dyson and to an extent, Cornel West are among those "intellectual" black leaders who indict those of us who have chosen to move our children out of the city. He tells us, black, middle to upper middle class, educated, that we should move back to the neighborhood to help save the neighborhood. Every-once-in-a-while, my guilt register rings off and then I have to stop and look around. No, the white man did not make these people leave trash on the sidewalk and steal a shopping cart and leave it in the neighborhood. The white man did not tell them to blast their music, walk around with tracks in their hair, or pull their pants down. The norms of these types of neighborhoods and not the norms I want my daughters to be raised around. This is part of the madness. Some of the people don't want to change and the ones that do are ridiculed. Some manage to make it out and don't look back, it is like a war zone and in order to not be numb to the violence, they have to leave! This incident, along with the one in Dunbar Village is the reason I won't live in a poor neighborhood.

I know I may get comments about stereotyping poor neighborhoods, but lets shine a light and let the roaches be seen! This is somewhat the premise of Come on People. I initially dismissed the book as a brother attacking black people, but after I read it, I realized they were trying to help the poor, black, urban neighborhoods that are imploding!

I began to think about how it can be saved. Why don't the women do a "Brewster's Place" and ban together, get mad, and run the raping men out! Why don't they pick up the phone and call the police? We can not protect ignorance!

Mothers, fathers, be parents. The minute I became a mother, twenty-five-years-ago, my life ceased being mine. Every decision I made was for my sons and then my daughters. I went without so I would feed them. My self-reliance and pride kept me seeking better jobs and my degrees so I could provide for them. I taught them the values my father taught me, I insisted upon their accountability and responsibility. I made tough decisions regarding my 21-year-old back when he was a teenager. I modeled the behavior I wanted in them.

I taught my sons to open doors for ladies at age 2. I made them address elders with respect, Mr. or Ms. So-and-So. My husband and I made our sons accept their punishments, whether from school, us, or even society. We always used moments to try to teach them. We offered to them unconditional love and accessibility, but we never allowed them to make excuses for failing a class, missing a test, or for my elder son, becoming involved with the wrong crowd. There were times we separated ourselves from our eldest in order to teach him. More and more black parents, mothers, need to raise their sons like they raise their daughters. We know society will be harder on them as black men, but we must not coddle them because of it. We must teach them resilence, accountability, responsibility. They must know, like my sons know, to protect their sisters, mothers, daughter with their life if necessary.

What is the lesson in the gang rape of an 11-year-old black girl? Where is the public outcry? When will righteous black men protect and honor the virtue of ALL black women? When will black women get mad enough? When will we change?