Kudos To A Tenacious Blogger

I recently came across the website "What About Our Daughters?" which was started by blogger Gina MacCauley.

First let me say I know I'm a little late to this particular party since at BlogHer alone, weemsrj, Kim Pearson, and lainad have all written articles about the site.

As I write this, there's a demonstration going on in Washington D.C. that she, her readers, an activist named Shane Johnson and others have been promoting.  It's covered in this article by Marisol Bello in today's USA Today.  Here are excerpts:

"When demonstrators rally on the steps of the U.S. Justice Department Friday to protest the government's handling of hate crimes, blogger-turned-activist Shane Johnson will be waiting for them with a protest of his own.

Johnson and a modest band of supporters are pushing back against the outpouring of black support for black male offenders, such as the Jena 6, saying it comes at the expense of female victims of black-on-black crime.

The group is leading a Jena 6-like grass-roots movement through e-mails, blogs and rallies. It wants to call national attention to the beating and rape of a 35-year-old Haitian woman and the beating and sexual assault of her 12-year-old son by up to 10 assailants in West Palm Beach, Fla."

The article continues:

"Johnson organized the rally after he read about the assault on the blog, "What About Our Daughters?" He questions why national black leaders and black media who supported the Jena 6 and the alleged victim in the Duke lacrosse case have ignored the Dunbar Village attack, in which the mother, son and alleged attackers are black.

"This is one of the most horrific and barbaric crimes I've heard about," says Johnson, 32, a social worker from Washington. "But if the victim is a black woman you seldom hear about it … especially if you have black victims and black perpetrators.""

It continues with the following statistics:

"An August report by the Justice Department showed that in 2005, blacks represented 13% of the U.S. population but accounted for nearly half of its murder victims. Most of the black murder victims — 93% —were killed by other black people. Blacks also were the victims of 15% of rapes, assaults and other non-fatal violent crimes.

Gina McCauley, an Austin attorney who runs the blog "What About Our Daughters?," a site devoted to fighting stereotypes of black women in popular culture, says the Florida case has garnered little national attention because "we don't value the lives of black women."

"We need to be talking about black-on-black crime," she says. "I have more of a likelihood of being attacked by a black person than a white person. We're being slaughtered. Why isn't anyone marching about that?""

I don't think many people, especially black people are aware of those statistics.  Or if they are, astonishingly, many don't seem to care.  Why is that?  Is it because when we're victims of crime as black people, 93% of us are victimized by black criminals?  Not white criminals.  Black criminals?  And what about crimes against black women by black men?  (And before I start getting angry comments, I am in no way talking about all black men.)  Why aren't we as appalled as we should be about those?

I've always wondered something about the OJ Simpson case.  Not the current robbery case, but the murder case.  I've always wondered what would have happened if Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman had been black. Would the black community have "reclaimed" him as black---he'd been considered "white" for a long time by the black powers that be---and would the wall to wall media coverage have reached the levels it did?

My answer to both questions has always been, "No."

But suppose Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman had gotten the knife from OJ and killed him instead. And then suppose they weren't prosecuted because the legal authorities determined they were defending themselves.

I can bet you money the NAACP, Al Sharpton and the Urban League would all have been out picketing the California statehouse, portraying OJ as the victim of a hate crime.

Check out WAOD.  It's an important site, doing important work.