#MeToo was started for black and brown women and girls but they’re still being ignored

By Tarana Burke,
founder #MeToo movement

My favorite diner is in Montgomery, AL. When I lived there more than 10 years ago, as often as I could, I ate there. The staff was super friendly; the eating area was clean enough and the food was delicious. The servers were mostly black women; the main cook was a black man. I liked to sit at the counter and order my food and talk to the servers. When I did, I’d often see the same disgusting behavior on the part of the cook toward various waitresses. She would shout out the order to him, and if she was not within his reach, he would say something like, “Bring your tail down here — you know I can’t hear you!” And if the waitress complied, at least 50 percent of the time, he would stand directly in front of her, practically close enough to plant a kiss on her lips and say something like, “What you gonna do for it?”

Over time I watched this routine play out in different ways. Arms slinked around waists, rear ends tapped, shoulders rubbed. Sometimes the waitresses pushed back — but only a little. Mostly, they learned to navigate the narrow space behind the counter and figure out ways to save one another from his vile, undesired advances. I was so outraged that I once got into a screaming match with the cook. I told him if he wouldn’t respect the waitresses, he would respect me as a customer and not openly sexually harass these women in front of me. In between admonishments to mind my “saddity” New York business, he told me that this was the way he and the women “played around” at work. He was so mad at me confronting him that he had to take a smoke break. While he was outside, the woman who I defended tried to reassure me that it was okay. When I asked her how she could put up with his gross behavior, she said simply, “He’s the boss.”

These last few weeks have been a whirlwind. Actually, they have been more like a floating sidewalk scene from a Spike Lee movie. From the start of #MeToo going viral and the recognition of my years of work preceding it, I have been happily allowing this wave of attention to shine a much-needed light on the fight to end gender-based violence. I founded the “me too” movement in 2006 because I wanted to find a way to connect with the black and brown girls in the program I ran. But if I am being honest with myself, and you, I often wonder if that sister in the diner has even heard of #MeToo, and if she has, does she know it’s for #Us- Too?

Black women have been screaming about famous predators like R&B singer R. Kelly, who allegedly preys on black girls, for well over a decade to no avail. Anita Hill, thanklessly, put herself and her career as a law professor on the line more than 25 years ago to publicly name Clarence Thomas for sexually harassing her at work.

Actress Jane Fonda acknowledged this fact during a recent interview about the public reaction to allegations of sexual harassment and assault from multiple women against movie producer Harvey Weinstein. “It feels like something has shifted. It’s too bad that it’s probably because so many of the women that were assaulted by Harvey Weinstein are famous and white and everybody knows them. This has been going on a long time to black women and other women of color and it doesn’t get out quite the same.”

Native American women have the highest rate of sexual assault in the country. According to the Department of Justice, American Indians are 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual assault crimes compared to all other races, and one in three Indian women reports having been raped in her lifetime. Yet they are never named in the national conversation about sexual violence.

Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that women of color experience a higher rate of sexual violence. In a survey of adult women in 2010, 22 percent of non-Hispanic blacks, 18.8 percent of non-Hispanic whites, 14.6 percent of Hispanics and 35.5 percent of women of multiple races said they had experienced an attempted or a completed rape at some time in their lives. The Bureau of Justice Statistics also reports that lower income women experience some of the highest rates of sexual violence.

Even in high school, students of color report higher rates of sexual violence: 12.5 percent of American Indian/Alaska Natives, 10.5 percent of Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander students, 8.6 percent of black students, 8.2 percent of Hispanic students, 7.4 percent of white students and 13.5 percent of multiple-race students reported that they were forced to have sexual intercourse at some time in their lives.

The young girls of color that first encountered the “me too” movement in community centers and classrooms and church basements were there not only because they needed a safe space, but because they needed their own space. They needed to find spaces where they could focus on their healing without having to be performative or guarded and “me too” gave them that space.

Tarana Burke is senior director of programs at girls for Gender Equity in Brooklyn. Follow her work at @metooMVMT.