by Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D.
The Truth Contributor
Black women, young and old, are not protected nationally, statewide, locally. They’re not protected. – Vanice Williams
One word that Black men often reach for and are quick to use, it is “protector.” We say it in church, in our homes and especially when we describe what a man is supposed to be. I have said it many times myself and meant it.
But as I watched a tearful Vanice Williams weep over a 15-year-old girl thrown to the ground on Austin Street — for not giving an officer her first name, for asking for her mother — I had to ask: protected by whom? Protected when?
When Councilwoman Williams said Black women are not protected, she was not only talking about the police. She was talking about everyone. And everyone includes us.
Tosha Woods told The Blade her daughter was defending her 18-year-old brother, who has mental health challenges, when the encounter began. A teenager protecting her brother — that is what officials call non-compliance. It is also exactly what Black women in our families and community have done for us, on our behalf, for as long as any of us has been alive.
The truth is that Black women have never waited for anyone to rescue them. They have been protecting themselves, each other, and frankly, us for centuries — without recognition or reciprocity, because complaint was a luxury the world did not extend to them. Vanice Williams did not need Black men to validate her grief. Tosha Woods did not need our permission to demand justice for her daughter.
So, this is not about saving Black women. They do not need saving. It is about something harder: stopping the ways we have added to their burden while calling ourselves their protectors.
Patricia Hill Collins named the controlling images historically imposed on Black women to justify their subordination that we, as Black men, too often absorbed — the loud woman who needs managing, the girl who is “grown.” When we call a sister angry instead of right, when we see a daughter’s fear as an attitude, we are doing the same interpretive work that the officer did on Austin Street. Less violently, perhaps. Yet, the same erasure.
Kimberlé Crenshaw and the African American Policy Forum’s #SayHerName campaign documented the consequence: Black women are roughly seven percent of the U.S. population but about 20 percent of unarmed people killed by police. Their names do not lead our marches. We have tended to march for our sons while the women beside us absorbed their grief in silence.
The mayor calls what happened on Austin Street “proactive policing.” Williams watched the same footage and called it what it was. So did Tosha Woods. Our first task is to take Williams’ and Woods’ readings seriously.
Moreover, Williams said one thing four times at that press conference — each time slightly differently, as if reaching for a different person in the room: “We need you to work with us to save our babies and not beat our babies.” I believe she was reaching for us, too. Not to lead. But, to finally show up beside her.
The young girl asked for her mother and got slammed to the ground and a knee on her neck. The least we can do is stop asking Black women to fight alone.
What Showing Up Beside Her Looks Like
Not rescuing but removing the weight.
- • Believe her account before you investigate it. Examine the controlling images or Black female tropes you carry — the ones you didn’t necessarily choose but absorbed anyway — and do that work in yourself. Show up to the press conferences, the city council meetings, and not just the protest. When a Black woman sounds an alarm, move toward it instead of running away from it or waiting for someone else to lead.
- • Say her name first — not also, not after — with the same urgency you say his. That is what #SayHerName has been asking of us for a decade.
- • Teach your sons explicitly what it looks like to believe a girl who says something happened to her, and to stand beside a woman being treated badly in public. Not chivalry. Solidarity.
- • Do not police Black women’s bodies, choices, volume, or how visible they make themselves in the name of keeping them safe. Telling Black women to shrink themselves for their own safety is a disrespectful demand that they hide who they are to survive.
None of this is heroic. That is the point. Partnership is ordinary, daily, and unglamorous but should become second nature. Black women have been doing it for all of us for generations.
The question now is whether we are finally ready to do it for them — not as saviors, but as partners overdue on a debt, we’ve ignored for too long.
Now that Williams has named the debt and asked for partnership, we must decide how we respond—whether we will be true partners instead of silent witnesses.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, PhD, at drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org