#MeToo and Intersectionality: An Examination of the #MeToo Movement Through the R. Kelly Scandal

The momentum of the #MeToo movement has broadened the reach of the campaign that activist Tarana Burke started in 2006 to help women of color from underprivileged communities who have experienced rape or sexual assault. The campaign received little mainstream media attention until 11 years later, when the phrase was used by prominent White women to share their stories of sexual assault through social media. While the movement has found success with the Weinstein effect, the original audience of the movementwomen of colordid not share in its success because of the added factor of race. This comparative analysis through an examination of the R. Kelly scandal will provide insight into the role that intersectionality has played in the #MeToo movement and how the movement has evolved to address intersectionality as part of its overall goal to combat sexual assault and harassment.

Introduction

The momentum of the #MeToo movement has broadened the reach of the campaign that activist Tarana Burke started in 2006 to help women of color from underprivileged communities who have experienced rape or sexual assault. Burke, who is African American, saw her efforts unheralded in the mainstream media when she first launched the movement (Ohlheiser, 2017). That changed in 2017 when prominent White women started using the phrase "#Me Too" as a hashtag to share their stories of sexual assault and harassment through social media. The "#MeToo" movement went viral and ushered in a new era of rules that would break down long-established power structures, define what type of behavior would be tolerated by men, and how people accused of sexual misconduct should be held accountable. But the boundaries of the debate between women and predatory men that the mainstream media outlined to define the #MeToo narrative did not include an underlying issue that emerged from the movement's rootsthe issue of intersectionality. While the #MeToo movement addresses grievances a person faces based on gender, it does not address situations in which race is also a factor.

The term "intersectionality" captures the "multidimensionality" of Black women's experiences (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 139). That is, Black women's identities are constituted by the interplay of gender, race, class, and sexuality and shaped by how these categories interact in particular historical, social, and cultural contexts (Nash, 2009, p. 3).

The collision of such marginalization was first highlighted by legal scholar Kimberle Williams Crenshaw (1989) and continues to surface today as society wrestles with how to appropriately tackle racism, sexism, religion, sexual orientation, and other forms of discrimination. This article explores intersectionality and how it can be applied to understanding the #MeToo movement. It will examine how society has chosen to respond to African American female victims at the center of the R. Kelly scandal and how the response compares to the backlash faced by victims after the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal. This comparative analysis will provide insight into the role that intersectionality has played in the #MeToo movement and how the movement has evolved to address intersectionality as part of its overall goal to combat sexual assault and harassment.

An Intersectional Lens

The theoretical framework used to analyze the R. Kelly scandal and the public response to African American female victims is intersectionality. Intersectionality refers to the concept of evaluating how an action, event, theory, or policy affects a community that is defined by at least two categories of identification, as opposed to one category (Gopaldas, 2013).

The foundation of intersectionality is that two separate categories of identification, when combined, can generate a third new category of identification that has its own set of circumstances and experiences that differ from the original two categories (Crenshaw, 1989).

Intersectionality was first defined in 1989, when Crenshaw (1989) created the term to examine Black feminist theory and how society struggled to address the specific grievances of Black women who were discriminated against because of their gender and race:

To bring this back to a non-metaphorical level, I am suggesting that Black women can experience discrimination in ways that are both similar to and different from those experienced by white women and Black men. Black women sometimes experience discrimination in ways similar to white women's experiences; sometimes they share very similar experiences with Black men. Yet often they experience double discriminationthe combined effects of practices which discriminate on the basis of race, and on the basis of sex. And sometimes, they experience discrimination as Black womennot the sum of race and sex discrimination, but as Black women. (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 149).

The term intersectionality was originally used to describe any person who has experienced discrimination based on more than one association with a group that has been previously oppressed by society. The term was needed because, as Crenshaw demonstrated, the judicial system and society in general viewed discrimination and oppression through a singular classification, usually associated with race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. Through an examination of three court cases, Crenshaw (1989) illustrated how judges rejected the claims of three major class-action lawsuits in which the plaintiffs comprised more than a single classification of discrimination (p. 141). This created a special class of victims, which, according to their interpretation of the law, was not the purpose of the law when it was created and passed by the U.S. Congress. This meant that African American women could either pursue legal claims based on race or gender, but not both, even when the circumstances and facts of the case displayed a bias toward people based on both factors:

Black women are sometimes excluded from feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse because both are predicated on a discrete set of experiences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of race and gender. These problems of exclusion cannot be solved simply by including Black women within an already established analytical structure. (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 140)

As a result, Crenshaw believed that intersectionality was the best framework to use when analysing how policy will affect issues concerning Black women. This concept of multiple classifications as a victim of discrimination revealed a deeper level of prejudice and bias that society in general had yet to understand and address 30 years ago. This was validated by the adoption of the term by other groups who also faced discrimination and oppression based on multiple classifications and has been used within the law to change the judicial interpretation of an aggrieved class of people.

The use of intersectionality has expanded as scholars in several other disciplines have used the theoretical framework to explore how different groups of people experience and are affected by various actions and policies (Hankivsky & Cormier, 2011, p. 217). Some of those fields include sociology, education, anthropology, psychology, political sciences, law and literary studies, health studies, and social work (Lutz, 2015). Intersectionality has also been used by scholars not specifying a particular group or social identity structures, which Gopaldas (2013) claims expands the concept of intersectionality beyond race, class, and gender to include categories such as

age, attractiveness, body type, caste, citizenship, education, ethnicity, height and weight assessments, immigration status, income, marital status, mental health status, nationality, occupation, physical ability, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and other naturalizedthough not necessarily natural ways of categorizing human populations. (p. 91)

The latest emergence of intersectionality has now surfaced in the form of the #MeToo movement.

The #MeToo Movement

The crux of the #MeToo movement has challenged gender norms and the roles they play in sexual assault and harassment. Overall, perceptions of victims and what role they play in a sexual assault or harassment incident are often weighed heavily by observers who use social and gender norms to form a public opinion about how to treat victims and those accused of sexual assault and harassment. Through the perspective of intersectionality, gender norms are shaped through cultural and social circumstancesand are different for White men and women when compared to men and women of color. As a result, generalizations associated with men and women tend to align more with the interpretation of the White social experience versus the social experience people of color have endured in our society:

Black men and women live in a society that creates sex-based norms and expectations which racism operates simultaneously to deny; Black men are not viewed as powerful, nor are Black women seen as passive. An effort to develop an ideological explanation of gender domination in the Black community should proceed from an understanding of how crosscutting forces establish gender norms and how the conditions of Black subordination wholly frustrate access to these norms. (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 155).

These differences set the foundation for how the African American female victims of the R. Kelly scandal were publicly shunned, while their White counterparts involved in the Weinstein scandal were publicly embraced. "Even today, as #MeToo continues to dominate headlines, black girls have been invisible in the movement," wrote Salamishah Tillet and Scheherazade Tillet in an editorial on the R. Kelly scandal for The New York Times. "And since black girls live at the crossroads of gender and racial violence, if we want to empower them, we have to confront and dismantle each system of oppression that affects them" (Tillet & Tillet, 2019, para. 9-10).

Turning Point: The Surviving R. Kelly Documentary

The documentary, Surviving R. Kelly (hampton, 2019), is a six-part television program on Grammy award-winning musician R. Kelly that aired on January 3, 2019 on the Lifetime television network. The series explored the ongoing allegations claiming that the R&B singer sexually assaulted women and had inappropriate and sexual relationships with underage girls. The Lifetime documentary covers the start of Kelly's career as a music producer and singer and how his status as a celebrity influenced his interaction with women and the public reaction to the allegations. It also featured interviews with family members, members of his entourage, journalists, music industry personalities, and several women who claimed to have been a victim of Kelly or observed behavior and incidents that were either inappropriate or illegal.

The documentary examined several aspects of Kelly's story. It probed his personal background to gain insight into when he started his alleged pattern of having sex with underage girls. It featured several women who described a grooming pattern of how Kelly approached women with whom he became sexual or romantically involved and the trauma they experienced or witnessed during their time with Kelly. The documentary also featured a segment on Kelly's relationship with underage R&B singer Aaliyah, whom he married without parental consent in 1994 when she was only 15 years old (the marriage was eventually annulled). This was the first public report of Kelly being romantically and sexually involved with an underage girl. Kelly's victims all described a pattern of sexual, mental, and physical abuse that included verbally abusing women and restricting where they could go at home and in public. Some victims also said that they were cut off from contact with other men, family members, and friends.

Public reaction to these allegations of sexual assault and inappropriate relationships with women is also a prominent subject in the documentary. Several people interviewed in the documentary point to Kelly's fame as a big reason why his actions were overlooked. The documentary also chronicled the public debate among fans over whether the victims should be believed and if the singer's music should be boycotted because of these allegations of rape and sexual abuse. It also looked at how Kelly managed to escape prosecution for charges of producing child pornography despite videotape evidence that showed him having sex with underage girls (DeRogatis, 2017).

The documentary itself became part of the scandal's narrative, as it sparked a renewed interest in the allegations against Kelly and was influential in getting more women to speak out about the abuse they allegedly suffered when romantically or sexually involved with Kelly. It also helped expand a movement to have his music removed from radio and Internet music streaming services. State and federal criminal charges have also been filed against Kelly since the documentary aired in 2019. In Illinois, the Cook County state's attorney filed 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse against Kelly on February 22, 2019 (Li, Fitzpatrick, & Fieldstadt, 2019). Federal charges were filed simultaneously in Chicago and New York City, totaling 18 charges that included racketeering, kidnapping, obstruction of justice, child pornography production, and child sexual exploitation (Meisner, Buckley, & Crepeau, 2019). Kelly has denied all accusations of wrongdoing and the allegations made in the documentary.

Intersectionality Meets #MeToo

The intersectionality of the #MeToo movement first emerged in the summer of 2017, when Buzzfeed (DeRogatis, 2017) published articles alleging that singer R. Kelly sexually, physically and mentally abused a group of African American female victims and outlined his history of predatory behavior against young and underage women of color. Three months later, in October 2017, the New York Times and the New Yorker published articles outlining a similar pattern of behavior by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

According to Surviving R. Kelly (hampton, 2019), the singer would continue a pattern of similar behavior in which he was sexually involved with teenage girls, some below the statutory age minimum of consent. This behavior resulted in charges of child pornography levied against him in June 2003. Five years later, he was acquitted of those charges. However, since the 1990s, Kelly has been accused of forming what has been described as a "sexual cult" that lives with him at his homes in Atlanta and Chicago and travels with him when he is on tour. Women who were formerly a part of this cult described an experience in which he isolated them from their friends and family, confined them to a bedroom, and made them ask for permission to eat, use a toilet, and move around their home. In addition, they said he made them call him "Daddy" and dictated what they wore and to whom they could speak.

According to these women, Kelly would physically and mentally abuse them if they did not follow his rules. While the women claimed that they were not held against their will in the cult, they described themselves as being brainwashed by Kelly and made to perform sexually humiliating acts. The documentary also featured two sets of parents who shared stories of how their daughters were currently members in an effort to help their daughters leave the cult. Kelly has settled several lawsuits stemming from this behavior with legal settlements. However, several women have since decided to speak publicly with the mainstream media or participate in the documentary that chronicled Kelly and his record of abuse. Buzzfeed broke the Kelly sex cult story in July 2017, which started a public dialogue surrounding the R&B legend and coincided with the #MeToo movement later that year (DeRogatis, 2017).

Three months after the Kelly story broke, the Harvey Weinstein scandal emerged after the New York Times and the New Yorker reported a history of sexual harassment and abuse by the movie mogul that reached back nearly 30 years. The victims, mostly White women, accused Weinstein of forcing them to have sex with him. He would invite them to his hotel rooms or office telling them he wanted to discuss their careers. Once they arrived, he would demand sex from them and threatened to use his influence to damage their careers if they did not comply (Farrow, 2017). At least 18 women accused Weinstein of rape, while more than 80 accused him of sexual assault or harassment (Barnes & Ransom, 2019).

Like the victims who spoke out in the documentary Surviving R. Kelly, those who shared their experiences of rape and sexual assault also feared retaliation from within their own community.

While the accusations were similarpowerful men using their influence to intimidate and coerce women into performing sexual acts or endure sexual harassment against their willthe mainstream media reaction was different. With the Weinstein case, the mainstream media focused on the high-profile White women who identified themselves as victims. This included actresses Ashley Judd, Angelina Jolie, Rosanna Arquette, Kate Beckinsale, Rose McGowan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mira Sorvino, Uma Thurman, Heather Graham, Annabella Sciorra, and Daryl Hannah (Saad, 2018). Media attention on the case eventually led to Weinstein resigning from his company, his company being dissolved, the loss of memberships to several professional academies, the rescission of honorary academic awards, and several criminal investigations. The scandal also had a ripple effect, known as the Weinstein effect (Almukhtar, Gold, & Buchanan, 2018), which tarnished the reputation of other famous film and television celebrities including Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, Louis C. K., Ben Affleck, Brett Ratner, James Toback, Matt Lauer, and Charlie Rose.

In an interview with The New Yorker, Sciorra told journalist Ronan Farrow that Weinstein "violently raped" and sexually harassed her during the early '90s. "From 1992, I didn't work again until 1995," she said. "I just kept getting this pushback of 'We heard you were difficult; we hear this or that.' I think that was the Harvey machine" (Farrow, 2017, para. 13).

Hannah, who starred in the Miramax blockbuster movie, Kill Bill, said that she felt backlash from her community after speaking out about how Weinstein sexually assaulted her while promoting the movie. "I experienced instant repercussions. I called all the powers that be and told them what had happened. And that I thought that was the repercussion, you know, the backlash, from my experience," said Hannah.

"I think that it doesn't matter if you're a well-known actress, it doesn't matter if you're twenty or if you're forty, it doesn't matter if you report or if you don't, because we are not believed. We are more than not believedwe are berated and criticized and blamed". (Farrow, 2017, para. 21-22).

The Cosby Factor

Another case that was also bolstered through the Weinstein effect was the Bill Cosby scandal. The Bill Cosby scandal featured more than 60 women (Mallenbaum, Ryan, & Puente, 2018) who accused the African American comedian of rape and sexual assault. On the surface, the allegations against Cosby appeared to have strong similarities to the R. Kelly scandal. Both Cosby and Kelly are powerful famous Black male celebrities who continued to receive significant support from fans even after the allegations were made public. Both scandals also featured victims who were women of color. However, the media chose to cover each case differently in terms of how race and class were addressed. In the Cosby case, the media shared (Allison, 2015;; F. Jones, 2015; S. Jones, 2018; Lockhart, 2018) stories of victims who were mostly Whitefrom aspiring artists to famous celebritieseven though nearly a quarter of Cosby's alleged victims were women of color (Mallenbaum et al., 2018). Class was not a factor in this case because the public image of the victimas portrayed by the mediawas a White woman, even though there were women of color among Cosby's victims. Had class been a factor, Black supermodel Beverly Johnson's account of being sexually assaulted by Cosby during the '80s would have been more prominently covered by the media.

Among the most outspoken accusers of Cosby in the public were all White womenAndrea Constand, Barbara Bowman, Carla Ferrigno, and Janice Dickersonwho helped create the public image of Cosby's victim as a White woman (Mallenbaum et al., 2018).

Former Temple University employee Constand, who was of Greek and Italian descent, accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her at his Pennsylvania home in 2004 (Bowley & Hurdle, 2018). She said Cosby touched her breasts and crotch and that she remembered waking up around 4 a.m. to find her clothes all over the room (Associated Press, 2005).

She later gave an 356 Journal of Communication Inquiry 43(4) interview to NBC's The Today Show along with four other women who testified against Cosby in his 2018 criminal trial.

Bowman was an aspiring actress who penned her own essay about being drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby in 1986 for The Washington Post. She wrote: "When I came to, I was in my panties and a man's t-shirt, and Cosby was looming over me. I'm certain now that he drugged and raped me" (Bowman, 2014, para. 2). She also described two more incidents in Reno, NV, and Atlantic City and shared details of her rape in interviews for Philadelphia Magazine, KYW-TV (Philadelphia), People Magazine, and Newsweek.

Ferrigno, a former Playboy Bunny and wife of bodybuilder/actor Lou Ferrigno, said that she was assaulted by Cosby during a double date with his wife, Camille. She said Cosby forcibly grabbed and kissed her in the basement of his Hollywood home before she pushed him away and ran out of the hall (Youn, 2014). She described the incident in an interview with Los Angeles radio station KFI.

Former model Dickerson, who was awarded a settlement in her defamation lawsuit against Cosby, said the entertainer drugged and sexually assaulted her in 1982 during a visit to Cosby's hotel suite in Lake Tahoe (Bowley & Hurdle, 2018). She described the details of her experience in interviews with The Guardian, Entertainment Tonight, and other media outlets. Because the public image of Cosby's victim was portrayed as a White woman, his defense team tried to position the accusations made against Cosby in racial terms using the crime of lynching as a metaphor for what they argued were motivating factors behind the scandal and the women's accusations. This portrayal was also underscored by the history of African American men who have been killed and convicted after being accused of sexually assaulting a White woman (F. Jones, 2015). A Cosby spokesperson compared the comedian to Emmett Till, a Black teenager who was murdered in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a White woman, after the verdict was released (Lockhart, 2018, para. 23).

Cosby's spokesperson also characterized his case as the "most racist and sexist trial in the history of the United States" and said that three psychologists who testified in Cosby's trial were "white women who make money off of accusing black men of being sexual predators" (Dale & Sisak, 2018, para. 5).

Within the African-American community, one of Cosby's black accusers said she received the same response from a friend who did not know that she was one of his victims: Last year, before I revealed my own story, I called a very dear AfricanAmerican friend and asked her what she thought about the women accusing Bill Cosby. "I don't believe these white women," she said. "They are just trying to destroy another black man." It pained me terribly to hear her say it, but I knew her perspective wasn't uncommon. Black people are sensitive to the fact that, for centuries, images of African American men as threats to white women have been used to justify oppressing them. (Allison, 2015, para. 6)

Escaping the #MeToo Effect

While the #MeToo movement gathered momentum through the mainstream media coverage of the Weinstein effect, the R. Kelly scandal, and its nonfamous African American female victims struggled to draw the same mainstream media attention even though their stories came out 3 months earlier than the Weinstein scandal and featured several similar circumstances. Kelly escaped the Weinstein effect, remained on RCA Records' music roster, continued to tour and perform concerts, and enjoyed airplay on radio stations around the nation. Burke, who was interviewed for the Lifetime documentary (hampton, 2019) on the R. Kelly scandal, summarized the media's double standard when covering celebrity cases of rape, sexual assault, and race:

These families came forward, and were making desperate pleas to get their children back, to get their daughters back home and away from R. Kelly. We've been watching them since they came forward in 2017 to try various attempts to get the media attention but it doesn't take hold, and again I think that goes back to this idea that black girls don't matter. They don't matter enough, and it's proven over and over again. (hampton, 2019)

Angelo Clary and his wife Alice shared their story about their daughter Azriel, who first met Kelly when her parents took her to one of Kelly's concerts in Tampa. Kelly lured Azriel, an aspiring teenage singer, with promises of mentorship for her singing career. Azriel eventually moved in with Kelly and cutoff communication with her family. Clary said that he felt race played a key role in the amount of attention the mainstream media paid to his story: "If those kids were Caucasian white women, we would not be going through this" (hampton, 2019).

The Social Case Against Black Chastity

In the Lifetime documentary, radio disc jockey Charlamagne Tha God, who has observed the R. Kelly scandal unfold during the past two decades, spoke about how the double standard in the mainstream media of Weinstein and Kelly reflected the how society has historically treated African American women:

The most disrespected woman in America historically has always been the black woman. You know, I always say if you want to get away with murder, kill a black rapper. If you want to get away with sexual assault, assault a young black girl. . . . If R. Kelly had been doing this to white women, oh my god. The fact that is it mostly young black girls he preys on, simply nobody cares. (hampton, 2019)

This lack of media attention in the R. Kelly scandal highlighted a key aspect of intersectionality, as Crenshaw (1989) had outlined it in her landmark article. She identified how the history of African American women struggling to have both their race and gender acknowledged as part of their struggle reaches as far back as the women's rights and civil rights movements. Crenshaw argued that the issue of rape and how White female victims and African American female victims are treated illustrated how intersectionality unfolds in the judicial and law enforcement systems. Crenshaw points to the intention of rape laws and how then have been enforced and adjudicated in the judicial system in different ways. For example, she shows how rape laws were created to preserve White female chastity, and how, if an African American man was found to have disrupted that chastity, he faced a heavy penalty, including lynching, imprisonment, or death. However, in cases where African American female victims accused men, especially White men, of rape and other sexual violent acts, it was not uncommon for White men to go unpunished by juries and law enforcement agencies.

Rape statutes generally do not reflect male control over female sexuality, but white male regulation of white female sexuality. Historically, there has been absolutely no institutional effort to regulate Black female chastity. Courts in some states had gone so far as to instruct juries that, unlike white women, Black women were not presumed to be chaste. (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 157).

Overall, the difference in treatment of African American female victims and White female victims reinforced stereotypical beliefs about the sexuality of African American women, who were not considered chaste. Mikki Kendall, a writer and cofounder of the blog Hood Feminism, said this stereotype was a key factor in the reaction to the stories of the African American female victims in the R. Kelly scandal: "We still socially don't perceive young black women as innocent, as deserving of protection, somehow it's their fault. When the reality is that the problem isn't the girls, the problem is the predators" (hampton, 2019). Tillet and Simmons (2007), and author of the No! The Rape Documentary Study Guide, said that the stereotype led to an assumption that African American female victims of sexual assault could not exist:

The other side of the racist stereotype is the Black woman "whore" who is incapable of being raped because she's always wanting, willing and able to have sex. More often than not when we are thinking about victims-survivors of sexual assault we don't think about, much less visualize women of color who have been sexually assaulted. (p. 10)

This sentiment was certainly shared by Jerhonda Pace, one of Kelly's accusers who publicly discussed her abuse at the hands of the singer. Pace met Kelly during his 2008 jury trial when she was 14 years old. She described moving in with him after the trial ended and being physically and mentally abused by Kelly when she did not follow his rules. She said that she decided to leave after he spat, choked, and slapped her during a disagreement. She said that the stereotype was not only apparent by the lack of mainstream media attention but was adopted within the Black community: "R. Kelly's victims, nobody just cares about the black victims that speak out, especially the black community. It's the black community that bashes the black women that speak out about abuse" (hampton, 2019).

The Roots of Black Female Victimization

The roots of these negative images of Black female sexuality can be traced back to the antebellum South during slavery, historians claim (Kennedy, 2003). The foundation was laid during slavery for the acceptance of certain rape myths and the pattern of African American women experiencing collective shame, selfblame, and guilt when coping with crimes involving sex. These are contributing factors as to why African American women are less likely to disclose their rape. There is a lengthy cultural history of disbelieving Black women. According to Nash (2009), "Historians show the connections between the racial-sexual mythologies that shape current perceptions of black women and the racial mythologies that enabled slavery" (p. 9).

As a result, slavery and its legacy of bigotry and sexual violence play key roles in the continuing discrimination against Black rape victims (Kennedy, 2003). The rape of African American female slaves by enslaved African American men or by White men in the antebellum South was not considered a crime. During slavery, rape was used to silence the African American community. African American women were viewed as hypersexual and existing only to increase the labor force since children of enslaved women inherited the legal status of their mother not their father. Slavery was underpinned by conceptions about Black women's deviant sexuality: (Nash, 2009, p. 2) the notion that Black women were good breeders, the conception that Black women were hypersexual, and the idea that Black women were quintessential mammies (Nash, 2009, p. 10).

Also contributing to this cultural enslavement were stereotypes that emerged in Europe and were later promoted by the European settlers who arrived in the United States. "America's racial representations were built on reinventions of European racial representations where blackness is a sign of lasciviousness and excess," wrote Diane Roberts (1994, p. 4). "When Europeans enslaved Africans, blackness came to mean not only easy sexuality but laziness, bestiality, savagery, and violence, all of which had to be countered" (Nash, 2009, p. 9).

Another stereotype used to culturally enslave African American women was the image of Black women as the "alluring, sexually arousing and seductive" Jezebel, which can also be traced back to slavery, when the image was used "to relegate all Black women to the category of sexually aggressive women, thus providing a powerful rationale for the widespread sexual assaults by White men typically reported by Black slave women" (Collins, 2000, p. 81). The modernday image of Jezebel has morphed into "welfare queens, hoochies, freaks and hoodrats" who are "sexually available and sexually deviant" (Donovan & Williams, 2002, p. 98) and continue to be viewed as responsible for the sex crimes that are committed against them: "The public identity of the 'welfare queen' is the indigent version of the Black matriarch controlling image: a dominant mother responsible for the moral degeneracy of the United States" (Hancock, 2004, p. 56).

Also prominently used was the stereotype of African American women being portrayed as mammies, a "faithful, obedient domestic servant," according to Patricia Hill Collins (2000, p. 72), which served to "explain Black women's longstanding restriction to domestic service" and allow the continued sexual violation of Black women (Nash, 2009, p. 9).

The Intersection of History and the Judicial System

The negative image of African American female victims of sexual assault has also become part of the culture in the judicial system. Studies have found that overall the judicial system is an environment in which African American female victims are not going to find justice when they were sexually assaulted by men, Black or White. Instead, these victims are met with several obstacles in how different actorsprosecutors, jurors, attorneys, and judgesall share the likelihood of prejudging the role of the victim in the sex crime committed against her.

Studies have shown that there has been a bias against African American defendants in cases of rape and violent crimes, but few have explored how the race of a sexual assault survivorespecially if the victim is African American affects the prosecution of her attacker in a rape case (Kennedy, 2003; Nash, 2009). Other studies have also explored how prosecutors are less likely to file charges in reports filed by African American victims than by their White counterparts in cases of rape and sexual assault. Race also plays an important role in whether juries find a victim credible, with one study showing how jurors were more likely to believe similar claims of rape made by a White victim, over a Black victim. And it is this fear of credibility in the testimony of Black victims that affects a prosecutor's decision to pursue claims of rape and sexual assault (Kennedy, 2003).

When the jury does find the assailant of an African American woman guilty of rape, her race continues to play a role in the proceedings. A study of actual trial outcomes indicates that, in combination with defendant race, victim race affects the seriousness of the defendant's charge and the severity, location, and length of his sentence (Kennedy, 2003).

Credibility also played a key role in claims of rape and sexual assault by African American women. Courts often ignored or discarded the testimony of African American women in cases of rape and sexual assault because they were viewed as liars or noncredible sources (Nash, 2009). One study found that jurors in felony rape cases are less likely to find a defendant guilty when a rape survivor is African American because of a negative sexual image of African American women (as hypersexual) or a belief that African American witnesses were less credible in court (Nash, 2009). A 1991 study by Cyndie Buckson (1991) that presented mock crime reports to police officers showed that race played a major factor in the credibility of a survivor's testimony. A 1995 study (Foley, Evancic, Karnik, King, & Parks, 1995) concluded that participants were more likely to find a suspect guilty if his victim is White, more likely to believe the testimony in a reported date rape if the victim is White, and less likely to view a sexual assault as rape if the victim is Black (Nash, 2009).

In addition, a 2008 study on how the criminal justice system responds to rape complaints was conducted by the Making a Difference (MAD) Project at End Violence Against Women International (EVAWI), which collected data on approximately 12,000 sexual assault cases from eight cities across the United States. EVAWI (2009) found that race affected prosecutorial decision-making and played a major role in whether prosecutors would pursue cases involving African American survivors. The study also found that judges often rejected cases made by rape survivors who were African American (EVAWI, 2009).

The Victim's Dilemma: Self Justice Versus Social Justice

Victim Jerhonda Pace's observation highlights another aspect of the R. Kelly scandal as it applies to the #MeToo movement. Unlike the Weinstein scandal, race was a key factor in how the public responded to the numerous accusations by African American women against Kelly. Crenshaw (1989) points to the conflict that arises when both race and gender are key points in a victim's oppression. Black women are sometimes forced to decide whether to sacrifice justice for themselves for the greater good of their community:

Even though [Payne v.] Travenol was a partial victory for Black women, the case specifically illustrates how antidiscrimination doctrine generally creates a dilemma for Black women. It forces them to choose between specifically articulating the intersectional aspects of their subordination, thereby risking their ability to represent Black men, or ignoring intersectionality in order to state a claim that would not lead to the exclusion of Black men. When one considers the political consequences of this dilemma, there is little wonder that many people within the Black community view the specific articulation of Black women's interests as dangerously divisive. (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 148).

This dynamic of multiple classifications for African American female victims poses a dilemma: They have to decide how their claims will affect the African American community as a whole or hinder the social progress of their racial community. And it is a double-edged sword if their grievances are made against a prominent African American man since they will be attacked by both African American women and the larger community for trying to tarnish the reputation of a symbolically uplifting role model. It could appear as if the African American female victim is being asked to sacrifice her justice for the sake of advancing the overall social justice of her racial community while not receiving any support or redress for her personal grievance. This dynamic emerged during another high-profile sexual harassment case: The Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings. When law professor Anita Hill accused a federal attorney and U.S. Supreme Court nominee named Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, she was criticized by both women and members of the African American community:

The two groups most visible at the Hill-Thomas hearing were at odds with each other. Many white feminists appeared largely unaware of the racial dynamics that shaped the Thomas-Hill confrontation. And many people fighting for racial justice, aware of lynching's toll on black men, heeded Judge Thomas's appeal to racial solidarity. They argued past each other, damaging the goal of antiracist and feminist collaborationthe sort of alliance Ms. Hill's testimony might have, in a better world, solidified. . . . We despaired as it became clear that our organizing on Anita Hill's behalf was ineffective in the face of outrage over a black woman who had dared to turn on a fellow African-American at the cusp of enormous judicial power. This complaint echoed across barber shops, churches and dining rooms across the country. (Crenshaw, 2018, para. 6)

Another high-profile example of this dynamic emerged during the premiere of the movie, The Color Purple. Some members of the African American community, including the Beverly Hills chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), felt (Crenshaw, 1989) the domestic violence scenes involving Danny Glover's character against the lead character portrayed by Whoopi Goldberg promoted an image of the African American man as violent against the African American woman. The film ultimately remained unchanged in its scenes, but Crenshaw (1989) presented the issue as another example of the self-sacrifice this dynamic presents for African American women: "The struggle against racism seemed to compel the subordination of certain aspects of the Black female experience in order to ensure the security of the larger Black community" (p. 163).

R. Kelly's Court of Public Opinion

This dynamic was central to the R. Kelly scandal and its African American female victims. Prior to the Buzzfeed (DeRogatis, 2017) article, supporters of Kelly defended his actions with various rationales. Despite the leak of three videos featuring Kelly having sex with at least two apparently underage girls, some supporters (hampton, 2019) pointed to the legal acquittal in 2008 as a reason not to condemn the R&B legend for his predatory actions. In that case, two key factors influenced the outcome. First, the family of the girl identified in one of the videos refused to testify or allow the girl to testify to her experience with Kelly. The girl was the niece of Kelly's protege, a singer named Sparkle who was signed to his boutique record label Rockland Records. The girl's father played in Kelly's music tour band. It was reported that the family was paid off and the girl's father continue to perform for Kelly as late as 2003. When the charges were filed, the family denied it was the girl in the video (the girl was later identified by Sparkle, who testified in the case). Without the cooperation of the family, prosecutors decided not to pursue statutory rape charges and instead filed 21 counts of producing child pornography, which was the second factor (Carlozo & Fekenhoff, 2002).

Ultimately, these factors led to a weak case and eventual acquittal. However, it gave Kelly supporters a reason to justify their continued loyalty to a man who had been recorded on videotape having sex with an apparently underage girl (hampton, 2019). Other Kelly supporters pointed to other example of famous entertainers involved in sexual relationships with underage girls, including music superstars Elvis Presley who met his former wife when she was 14 years, and Jerry Lee Lewis, who married his first cousin once removed when she was 13 years and he was 22 years (Salam, 2019). A social media hashtag #FirstThem was later used by his supporters to highlight this argument (Sadeque, 2019).

In the Surviving R. Kelly documentary (hampton, 2019), three African American womenshown separately waiting on line for an R. Kelly concert that took place after the Buzzfeed article (DeRogatis, 2017) appeareddisplayed no empathy for victims of the R. Kelly scandal. "Yo, he's been the same for years," one concertgoer says looking to the FOX5 news camera. "Who are we to judge?" another concertgoer says looking to the FOX5 news camera. "The protesters don't affect anything," a third concertgoer says looking to the FOX5 news camera. Their reactions reflect other general assumptions of the R. Kelly scandal as an attempt by society to take down a successful African American man, a sentiment echoed in the Cosby case. Kelly himself released a statement making similar accusations (Blackmon, 2018):

R. Kelly supports the pro-women goals of the Time's Up movement. We understand criticizing a famous artist is a good way to draw attention to those goals and in this case, it is unjust and off-target. We fully support the rights of women to be empowered to make their own choices," the statement added. "Time's Up has neglected to speak with any of the women who welcome R. Kelly's support, and it has rushed to judgment without the facts." Soon it will be clear Mr. Kelly is the target of a greedy, conscious and malicious conspiracy to demean him, his family and the women with whom he spends his time. R. Kelly's music is a part of American and African-American culture that should neverand will neverbe silenced. Since America was born, black men and women have been lynched for having sex or for being accused of it. We vigorously resist this attempted public lynching of a black man who has made extraordinary contributions to our culture. (Blackmon, 2018, para. 5)

These responses echoed the sentiment Oronike Odeleye (hampton, 2019) said that she observed when she cofounded the #MuteRKelly campaign, which seeks to stop Kelly's music from being sold, performed at concerts, played on the radio, and streamed via online music streaming services. "The response was very polarized, as is the black community on R. Kelly," Odeleye said. When she first started working with the campaign, she thought the history of R. Kelly's behavior would be enough to quickly meet her organization's goals. "I thought that would be a simple ask," Odeleye said. "That was met with resounding silence" (hampton, 2019).

Odeleye said racial progress was a key factor in the polarization that took place within the African American community:

You have this powerful person that is beloved in the African-American community and then you have a victim that no one cares about. And the greater society perpetuates stereotypes about black women that internally you start to believe. We'll believe if it is a convenient excuse not to have to deal with the reality of R. Kelly and how we have been supporting and enabling him for decades. (hampton, 2019).

Odeleye's experience underscored that the remaining support for Kelly has been influenced by the cultural dynamics found within the African American community and its experience with racism (hampton, 2019). Some scholars have written about African American women excusing violent acts by African American men because of the racism African American men experience in society:

In her 1990 book, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, the scholar bell hooks writes:

Many of us were raised in homes where black mothers excused and explained male anger, irritability, and violence by calling attention to the pressures black men face in a racist society . . . Assumptions that racism is more oppressive to black men than black women, then and now, are fundamentally based on acceptance of patriarchal notions of masculinity. (p. 124)

However, the #MuteRKelly movement gradually found famous supporters who were upfront about the disrespect faced by African American female victims. "I didn't value the accusers' stories because they were black women," said Chance the Rapper, a Chicago rapper who worked with R. Kelly in 2015 (hampton, 2019). With high-profile members such as John Legend, Kerry Washington, Shonda Rhimes, Ava Duvernay, Viola Davis, and Lupita Nyong'o of the African American community speaking out against R. Kelly and in support of the African American female victims, the victims started to experience a change in the response from the mainstream media, which has more frequently featured their stories (Newman, 2019). This change occurred recently with the debut of the "Surviving R. Kelly" documentary and its timingairing almost a year after the Weinstein scandal and #MeToo movementhas influenced how society handles accusations of sexual abuse by powerful men.

A key factor in the documentary's effect in sparking the public reexamination of the allegations against Kelly was the firsthand accounts of Kelly's victims. Several women spoke in on-camera interviews about the abuse they experienced when they were with Kelly. His ex-wife, Andrea Lee, shared the experience of being physically attacked by Kelly in the back seat of a Hummer truck and also being raped and hogtied by Kelly. Lizzette Martinez met Kelly in Florida in 1995 when she was 17 years and described how he physically abused and hit her when he felt she was looking at other men. Lisa Van Allen, who met Kelly when she was 17 years in 1998, shared how she was smacked by Kelly when he did not feel she was listening to him or felt she was looking at other men. Jerhonda Pace, who was 14 years when she met Kelly in 2008, said Kelly slapped her and choked her until she passed out. Kitti Jones, who was 33 years when she met Kelly in 2011, talked about how Kelly physically abused her 2 weeks after she moved in with him when she questioned him about the videotapes showing him having sex with an underage girl (hampton, 2019).

The documentary, for the first time, showed the victims as human beings who had lives before they met Kelly and saw their lives changed through traumatic events Kelly inflicted upon them. Viewers saw their tears and uncomfortable body language as the victims recounted the emotionally damaging experiences they suffered when they were with Kelly. These personal testimonies, along with the timing of the documentary, led to a change in the public response to the allegations against Kelly (hampton, 2019).

As a result of the documentary's mainstream media exposure, Kelly finally experienced the Weinstein effect, which took place just months after the Kelly scandal emerged. The broadcast of the documentary reintroduced the R. Kelly scandal to a public audience that had shifted its thoughts about how to treat, respect, and respond to victims of sexual abuse and misconduct. This new approach to responding to sexual assault and misconduct allegations led to other public figures and businesses disassociating themselves with the accused.

For Kelly, several artists, including Lady Gaga and Celine Dion, who once 366 Journal of Communication Inquiry 43(4) worked with Kelly spoke out against t him and requested their joint projects not be featured on music streaming services (Gottsegen, 2019). Kelly's record label RCA records was reported to have decided not to put any more money into Kelly's music, which meant his contract will likely expire and not be renewed. Several radio stations have decided not to play Kelly's music. Concert promoters have also decided to cancel some of his concerts, and the singer has had trouble getting permission to host concerts (Osborne, 2019).

Conclusion

The documentary about the R. Kelly scandal sparked a prominent and rapid evolution in the #MeToo movement and the mainstream media through the perspective of intersectionality. The social media and public debate about the role of intersectionality in the R. Kelly scandal at first compelled the African American female victims of Kelly to consider not publicly discussing their sexual assault for fear of being attacked by their own community. It was a present case study of how race and gender affected Kelly's victims in a different way from the prominent White women who were victimized by Weinstein. While Weinstein's victims dealt with gender-related grievances, Kelly's victims had to consider the complicated balance of addressing both race and gender.

The focus on intersectionality ultimately provided a reckoning for the #MeToo movement, which saw an expansion of the mainstream media's coverage of the R. Kelly scandal and fallout and featured several interviews with various women who were sexually assaulted by Kelly. Thirty years after Crenshaw (1989) first introduced the concept of intersectionality, the world discovered it still had a lot more to learn. "It seems that #MeToo has finally returned to black girls," wrote community activists Salamishah Tillet and Scheherazade Tillet.

After all, #MeToo was founded by a black woman, Tarana Burke, to help AfricanAmerican girls like the 13-year-old in Alabama who told her in 1997 about being sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend. Now we have to make sure that it does not leave. (Tillet & Tillet, 2019, para. 5).

Questions to Answer: (Use the Passage Above to Answer These Question)

What are 2 things you understood well from this passage?

What is 1 thing that you did not understand and what specifically or why?

What is thing that you really liked from this passage?