Why are black women still not good enough for white men?

16 September 2014 - 02:00 By Reni Eddo-Lodge, © Daily Telegraph
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now

The news that Django Unchained actress Danièle Watts was allegedly handcuffed and detained while out with her white partner after being mistaken for a prostitute did not come as a surprise.

It is a horrible story that has understandably spread across the internet like wildfire.

For many, it is hard to believe that this kind of racism still exists until it is shoved into your news feed.

But the reasons for being outraged are complicated and messy. So let us unpick this, layer by layer.

For couples with the will and the disposable income, travelling together should not be a big deal. But for interracial couples it is just not that easy. Stares, glares and snide comments are par for the course.

You quickly learn to stick to the big cities instead of heading for rural areas because it is just common sense.

Travelling the world as a black person is hard enough - I have been accosted by strange men on a beach in Turkey - but travelling as a black-and-white couple can be migraine inducing.

You have to be hyper aware of where you travel, the politics of the region, and the reactions you might elicit walking down the road together. All the while, your white partner has his eyes opened because he is experiencing racism by proximity, learning the intricacies of a problem he has never before had to deal with. This obliviousness until confronted with such a glaring problem is almost the definition of white privilege.

I doubt that any of this is a revelation to Watts, who was not even travelling abroad. She was in America - the land of the free. But culturally, we are in a weird place right now. Black women's affectations are experiencing a fashion moment.

Thanks to Mercury Prize nominated artist FKA Twigs, gelled-down baby hairs, the hairstyle of choice for me and my secondary school classmates in 2004, were on the catwalk at New York Fashion Week a few days ago. Various smiley white pop stars are accessorising with big black bums, and some black female pop stars seem to be reclaiming it. Actually, inhabiting a black woman's body continues to hold indelible hazards; ascribed to that body are meanings we didn't ask for but constantly have to deal with.

What happened to Watts is disgusting for many reasons. That black women are assumed to be sex workers because white men are perceived to be too good for us is a popular ideology.

Sex workers suffer stigma, disdain and discrimination because of their work, no matter how they have come to it. This is what author Melissa Gira Grant calls "whore stigma" - the kind that sees sex workers fired from jobs and ostracised from family and friendship groups.

Sex workers are as diverse as people are diverse. But if Watts were white, walking down the street with her white partner, I very much doubt that she would have been affected by that whore stigma. I doubt that those police officers would have paid any attention to the couple at all.

As long as racism exists, black women will be assumed to be sex workers. It is an ugly intersection.

Above all, what's truly disgusting is the brazen audacity of a police force that treats those assumed to be sex workers with such contempt. That is the real story here.

Brothel raids, violence, arrests, being detained without charge - this is the kind of state regulation sex workers face globally on a daily basis, all under the guise of "help" - and it is truly terrifying.

subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now