It’s not really about NOT believing black women because let’s be honest, who doesn’t believe he did what he did? At least Cosby there was this disconnect between the pristine public image he cultivated for decades vs the monster he was in real life. R. Kelly? NO DOUBT!

Pre-Facebook/Youtube you had actual visible evidence to the point where it was joked about on the radio, etc. Let’s not even touch the fact that it was literally child pornography so many people were comfortable about discussing.
You had Dave Chapelle’s Pee On You going on fifteen years ago
You had Daily Beast going in on a full expose a year ago


At the time of the original trial I remember a bunch of the arguments at the time boiled down to ‘They were old enough to be having sex anyway’. A weird comparison basically too since he was popping at the time it was the same like a 20 year old dude pulling up in a Pathfinder macking on the seniors in the parking lot. Except these are kids barely outta middle school and a dude deep in his mid-thirties!

You can say that it’s about the view of women, specifically black women, as a disposable sexual commodity. But even then I don’t think it covers it all because they weren’t women, they were girls.

If you want to push that thought you can say it’s because the white world ages up black kids. Your Treyvon’s, the girl at the pool party and the girl in the classroom with the desk getting mollywopped by grown ass cops. Kids weighing 100 or so pounds but by their nature of blackness they are adult, dangerous and bad.

But then, those were basically white perpetrators, and R. Kelly is a uniquely black problem since everyone involved was of color. Kellz, the victims, etc.


So, why did we drop the ball?