🧨 Selective Empathy: Who Gets Compassion—and Who Gets Condemned

⚖️ “But His Parents Divorced…”

As an advocate for victims of violence, abuse, and rape; I’ve sat in enough courtrooms to know this:
When a white defendant stands accused, mainstream America often leans in with compassion.

• “He had a tough childhood.”

• “His dad wasn’t around.”

• “He struggled after the divorce.”

Suddenly, trauma matters.
It softens the blow. It complicates guilt.
It becomes a shield.

🚫 But Not If You’re Black—and Especially Not If You’re a Black Woman

Now switch the lens.

Your great-aunt’s child was murdered by police.
She never recovered.
The family raised her children while those same police still terrorized the block.
No empathy. Just questions. Suspicion. Shrugs.

If your community was poisoned by toxic water, leaving people ill or mentally unstable—
No understanding.
No documentaries. No dramatized courtroom scenes. No “healing journeys.”
Just blame. Just invisibility.

🎥 Have You Heard of Lena Baker? America Has.

Lena Baker was a Black woman from Georgia.
In 1945, she was executed by the state for killing a white man who had repeatedly kidnapped, raped, and enslaved her.
She acted in self-defense.

She told the truth. She begged for mercy.
The all-white jury deliberated for less than a day.

She was executed in the electric chair at age 44.

📚 There are books.
🎬 There’s a movie.
🎙️ There are documentaries.

But still, after untold stories of Black women sharing our stories and baring our souls, when Black women speak of violence and fear…
America blinks like it’s the first time they’ve heard of it.

😠 “What Are You Scared Of?”

We hear it all the time:

• “Why didn’t you just leave?”

• “If it was me, I would’ve fought back.”

• “Are you sure it was really abuse?”

As if Black women walk through a system that was built to protect us.
As if we’ve been taught to believe help is coming.

🔥 Here’s the Truth:

Black women aren’t asking for special treatment.
We’re asking to not be punished for surviving.

We’re asking you to remember:

• The case of Lena Baker

• The water in Flint, Michigan

• The patterns in Mississippi prisons

• The silencing of Black girls harmed in plain sight

We’ve carried generations of violence and still found ways to mother, build, resist, and speak.

💔 But When We Cry Out—America Is Still Shocked

Still slack-jawed.
Still whispering, “I didn’t know.”

Or maybe you did?
Maybe you preferred not to hear us or look at us.

✊🏾 Postscript

Don’t wait for another documentary.
Don’t wait until it’s your co-worker, your neighbor, your niece.

Believe us now. Protect us now. Mourn for Lena. But fight for the living.