Written by Nicole J.

In this episode of “Black Women Crowdfund the Craziest Things!” we see what I suspect is a black woman attempting to raise money for a heinous piece of excrement currently in custody for the murder of Maleah Davis, an innocent little girl whose life was taken because the people in her life didn’t love her enough to protect her from the evil in this world.

I came across the aforementioned GoFundMe on Simone on Fire’s Facebook page. Thanks to Simone and her like-minded Facebook followers, the campaign was flagged and removed. I have not followed the case too closely because I’m honestly tired of seeing black kids making the news for turning up missing or dead. Instead, I will shine a light on the ever present loyalty of black women.

Black women just loooooove black men. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s the natural order of things. But black women maintain that loyalty to some individual black men even after having proven himself to be absolute gutter garbage. They will make excuses for him, even if the evidence all points to him being guilty (the “My baby dindu nuffin” trope). They will beg, borrow and steal to raise money for him (as noted above). Or, they will put themselves on the line for him, like Tawanna Hillard, a black mom who used her paralegal role to help her gang member son, currently doing a 10-year bid for armed robbery,  find snitches.

Black women are more loyal to anything resembling a black male, more than her loyalty to herself, her underage children, her hairline, her vagina’s pH balance, her coronary arteries, her teeth, her disease status, her credit, her mental health, her life savings, her reputation, her 401K, her personal wellbeing, ALL of it. Black males get the benefit of the doubt over children, for example, when a teenager falls victim to known predator in the community, it’s hard to find any empathy for her over the chorus of “she should have known better”. Just in case you didn’t know, a 17 year old is still a child, and though 18 years equals legal adulthood, most 18 year olds are still mental children too.

As long as you got a black dick, you’re A-OK in some of these women’s books. A black male can literally murder children but all will be forgiven because she will do anything for her king! You got me all sorts of messed up if you think I owe you a shred of loyalty because me and you are black. Just like respect, loyalty must be earned, and I don’t give out bonus points because you’re a friend of a friend. The attitude that black women have to excuse minor indiscretions up to egregious conduct is offering up the children of the community to be sacrificed.

This goes beyond the woman who started the Go Fund Me. The flip side of this is that family members or close friends can be blinded to someone’s true nature due to the closeness of the relationship. It doesn’t excuse anything, it just explains it. The loyalty extends to the black women (because I just know it was women donating) who voluntarily gave money hoping to release a predator back into the community, even though they may not know this man from Adam. This loyalty shows itself in women who donate their time and energy into supporting famous figures with a history of predatory behavior, and lambasting the girls who fell prey to him, saying that they should have known better even though they just finished puberty.

Look at this another way. This kind of loyalty to known wrongdoers is unmatched in other communities. And yet, despite the constant support black women collectively provide, the black male collective still fail? This is one of the many reasons I don’t get why black men get called “kings” (or “kangs”) online. Kings of what? What kingdom? Cellblock D? His mom’s couch? A YouTube comment section? I don’t get it.

We all know that the black community is in a bad way, and both black men and women have their fair share of Ls to hold. But because of the loyalty of the collective of black women, not only do black men get to continue carrying out the same behaviors that contribute to the community’s downfall with little to no consequences, but black women get to be the scapegoat for it all. Case in point, the “who raised us?” retort when attention is shone on problematic behaviors.

Let this be a lesson to you. You don’t have to be loyal to people who have done horrible things because they’re your friend or you’re related to them. And in the wise words of Kendall St. Charles, one sided loyalty is for suckers.