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On Being “Race First”, Stephon Clark, and Gendered Black Community Hypocrisy
“Garvey said race FIRST- he did not say race ONLY” -Diallo Kenyatta
Stephon Clark, murder victim of Sacramento Police in his own grandmother’s back yard, has been exposed (via his own tweets) as a man who displayed abject hatred, disdain, and anti-Blackness aimed specifically at Black women — particularly dark-skinned Black women. Stephon has also been shown to have made light of the issues raised by the #BlackLivesMatter movement; at one-point quipping “My son is Korean and Indian- his life don’t matter?” The tweets were as recent as mid 2017. We are all aware that his children are just as much black as they are Korean and Indian and that stating that Black Lives Matter does not mean that other lives do not — Stephon clearly wasn’t. He has now found himself victim of the system and silenced.
The issues that Stephon Clark has raised has once again split Black women’s political loyalty between our race and our sex, which are both equally integral parts of our identities and the oppressions that we face. Many have argued that Black women should continue to fight for Stephon Clark because he was shot down due to his race and not because of his political leanings, and that Black women should be “race first.”
