JC PENNEY, Y’ALL! It’s so damn disturbing.
According to reports, the girl was with her family when they were told to leave by the suspect after telling them “they didn’t belong there.”
On their way out, the girl knocked over a display as retaliation and the man jumped at her and wrestled her into a headlock.
While many people shouted, “let her go” the family was bargaining with the man offering him money for the sign she knocked over.
When mall security finally arrives they took the girl away in handcuffs.
Video credit: Katryana Wilson
Absolutely outrageous 😬😬😬😬
Hate to keep at this, but, black women …black girls are still seen as not valuable, unworthy of protection, respect, love, delicate treatment, accommodation, chivalry…
And this mindset manifest in the continued disrespect and brutalization, will not stop as long as we keep turning a blind eye to the many ways – overt, covert …and as black folks even become more complicit…and de-sensitized, to the many ways various stereotypes and ‘universal standards’ have been flagrantly and insidiously applied and taken hold, to summarily indict, minimize, trivialize, dismiss, diminish, demean, justify – and to accept the brazen dehumanization of black women and girls…
And as long as – and to the extent that even some black men and women have now absorbed and embraced this continued dehumanization and demeaning of black women …and have been acculturated in the worst ways to the extent that they’ve been psychologically co-opted so that they too now subconsciously dismiss and perpetrate some of that same abuse on black women..
If the historic first black First Lady has not only been so blatantly and very personally, viciously and maliciously brutalized and dehumanized for 8+ years… but denigrated, disrespected and disregarded…and offered none of the protections, defense and unquestioned right of place and place of respect right next to her husband – as has been historically and automatically extended to First Ladies before her… if she’s not been offered that even within her own husband’s White House….
And if the historic first black First Lady has been subjected to and has experienced all of this disrespect and dehumanization even at the hands of those supposedly ‘on our side’, more ‘open-minded’ and ‘higher-minded’ and ‘couldn’t possibly be racist because they ‘support’, like, and work with/for her husband…including inside her own husband’s White House and ‘inner circle’…
And if the historic black First Lady has stoically endured and somehow survived all this visible and hidden scars and all…all on her own, and has through years of unprecedented and non-stop abuse, disrespect, denigration, disregard and vicious personal attacks on, and malicious maligning and dehumanization of her….if she’s been mostly undefended and unprotected …and not even by her own husband’s White House …or even by fellow women…or black women….many of whom at the same time, ironically, have been quick to step in to wage furious battles not only in defense of Hillary Clinton and other high-profile women, but they’ve been out there protecting and defending even the President – A man. THE man who made the call to enter politics and elective office with all its many pitfalls…where his undefended and unprotected wife on the other hand, always had real concerns – and was always presciently leery …But they are those who’ve stepped in to not only correct the record, but to fight hard for, defend and protect the President and his reputation from attacks and falsehoods…while the historic black First Lady was left to suffer through the vicious attacks on her…never protected or defended…and today, damaging reels of falsehoods – including those that even question her womanhood and whether she is even ‘suitable’ or ‘deserving’ of being on her own husband’s arm – like she’s some sort of inconvenient ‘pity’ catch or ‘political’ chess pick on his part…as if he did her the favor…abound and persist …and has taken hold not only on the internet, but seeped into the consciousness and daily conversations of many even around the world – and not just those primed to consume and believe the worst about black women – but even by those who aren’t…when supposedly well-meaning folks praise her but feel the need to add that they don’t care even if she’s ‘really a man’…or patronizingly offer that she’s ‘not as intelligent as her husband’…or how the older kid is ‘as intelligent, thoughtful like her dad’, and that she’s ‘grown into a wonderful woman’ because of her father who ‘demures’ about taking credit that’s due him and instead gives ‘Michelle’ undeservedly, ‘all the credit’… and what did the President her husband who’s a ’10’ ever see in her …this, not from the vile right-wingers, but from so-called ‘supporters’…some even black..
The dangerous and insidious attempts to degrade and denigrate… negatively cast her in the worst possible light…make her as targetedly unsympathetic and hostility-eliciting as possible …as unworthy…as not smart enough…the only time the White House or those who are affiliated with her husband’s White House ever publicly acknowledged or offered any response to the historic FLOTUS, was to very loudly credit a speechwriter with her well-received speeches while campaigning for Hillary…handing and arming those who are always on the look out for ways to diminish and dismiss her, with the ‘but she didn’t write it, a white woman did’ sound bites….
They’ve gone above and beyond to try to cast her as completely unworthy …and not even marginally ‘suitable’ or sufficiently ‘delicate’ or naturally deserving of been doted on… too hardened and for no just reason… in that way many black women are very familiar with …even as her own elected husband – a man – is cast as delicate, valuably fragile, warm, fuzzy, kind, caring, credited and elevated for his white heritage, as precious and deserving, and unquestionably brilliant, and needing to be protected – even from her, his own wife…and as decided even by some of his supporters – including sadly, some black folks… and some black women, who project and automatically attribute all manner of superiority and excellence to him …including all that’s best about the daughters she birth and mostly raised and sacrificed for – and even crazily, given credit even for her own hard-won accomplishments that preceded him – and insisting that the subsequent jobs and salaries she had that were easily well below what she would have been making had she on her own as a double-ivy league educated woman, charted and pursued her own course, as all to his credit too …while largely dismissing and relegating her – the independent woman who made her own way through 2 Ivy League universities and was already practicing at a top-shelf law firm long BEFORE they ever met… permanently freezing and confining her to the narrowest part of her biography as some poor black girl from the SouthSide of Chicago who was benevolently rescued from what would have otherwise been, a destitute existence…
As long as this conscious and subconscious automatic degradation, demeaning, disrespect, disregard and confining and outrightly dismissing as not valuable, as exemplified even in the treatment and narrative of the most visible black woman on the world stage today, persists…as long as for instance, so-called supporters – including even some black women supporters of the President, continue to disrespect and flagrantly disregard the historic black First Lady in any number of ways – including feeling completely entitled to hijack her husband as theirs to do and say whatever they wish – simply because they supported him politically…absolutely flouting all boundaries – and all while dismissing her and disrespecting her 24+ years marriage…as long as there are those who seriously make glib statements about how they wish ‘he had a son’…as if the 2 daughters the now 52 year old First Lady and 55 year old President already have aren’t quite enough…and somehow, a son would be more desirable and somehow the ultimate mark of greatness – specifically for him…never mind that Bill and Hillary Clinton have just the one daughter and George and Laura Bush have twin daughters…and nobody is fussing about a lack of son or running around disrespecting these 2 women and their daughters in that manner…the danger inherent in ‘supporters’ who not only get carried away and begin to believe that another woman’s husband is somehow their property to be coddled and redesigned as they see fit… never mind his wife – or the damage done in the short and long term to a marriage and family, by these intrusive over-reaches by strangers and others…especially in these times of wildly extensive, open and available social media …and greedy, conniving, political operatives, hangers-on and opportunists…
As long as the historic black First Lady – the current most visible metaphor for black women and black girls, has not even marginally been extended the respect and protection of her position…and has instead been subjected to – as she herself alluded, to the subtle and not so subtle indignities…including by some in and around her own husband’s White House …the former white male press secretary who cursed the black First Lady out…in her own husband’s White House…the current press secretary, videographer and official White House photographer and others who find the many ways to try to disrespectfully diminish and erase her as much as possible from the documentation of her husband’s historic presidency for posterity…casting her ever so grudgingly when and only if the absolutely must…and mostly as some random woman for hire who’s only still around – or in the picture, only because she just happens to have birth the President’s daughters …the daughters who along with just about everyone else in the President’s orbit, are usually narratively prioritized, elevated and placed above and over their mother – the historic first black First Lady…the daughters who seem to exist for the White House press and communications staff mostly – when they aren’t too busy inserting their own children or themselves into the story – the historic First Couple’s daughters appear to exist as somehow part of a strange and persistent effort to bolster a curiously insistent and glaring image that isolates and separates the President from his wife…most of the photographs of them as a loving couple are courtesy of outside sources…People magazine, Essence…etc. never from the White House photographer who’d rather churn out photographs of the married President targeted at his female supporters to coo over …a particular narrative of the historic President as pertinently and isolatingly, not as part of a loving and devoted couple and half of a parent twosome…but, just as a great father…as if he were a single father….and never ever or even remotely, or equally, a great husband to the more than deserving black woman and mother of his 2 daughters…who is as much a target of death threats as her husband the President from those who would harm him and her in her capacity as his wife …including the cops assigned to escort her motorcade..
As long as even the historic black First Lady is subjected to this brazen dehumanization …subjected to the subtle and not so subtle indignities even in her own husband’s White House – and from her husband’s ‘supporters’…as long as black women as a whole are too distracted and in some instances, wittingly and unwittingly roped in as active participants in the demeaning and disrespect of her…and are far too short-sighted to see just how generally damaging as a whole…and how it aids and permits the overall mindset that continues to power these pervasive negative attitudes towards, and the continued brutalization of black women and girls….as long as we keep pretending that what is happening to our historic black First Lady isn’t happening…or isn’t deserving of real pushback…or that these incidents aren’t even connected – and are happening only, and to be tackled in isolation …sad to say, there’s little hope for the random black girl and woman going about minding their business on the streets, in the stores and just about any place in this country..
Eliihass, I can’t tell you on WordPress how angry I am. I see this image in my head. I want to………this inhuman savage from the pit of hell.
I get it completely SG…
Besides, we all know your heart, and just how sensitive you are…how much things like this affect you – no matter where it’s happening, or who it’s happening to…
I watched the video you posted and I was literally shaking …if I could have reached into my screen to pull that man off that little girl, and give him and that cop walking her away in handcuffs, a couple of dirty slaps, I would have…
I know I go into these endless rants especially sounding the alarm and making the connection between incidents like this one to how FLOTUS has been treated…
But, think about it, if the historic black First Lady can be so brazenly disrespected, dehumanized and so maltreated – not just by the right-wingers…but especially and even in her own husband’s White House, by staff hired and working for her husband…and nary a peep…with everyone turning a blind and pretending that there’s nothing to see…how on earth do young black girls and black women think they get to be spared the same fate or worse as they walk around anonymously going about their business in a world filled with elected Mayors, doctors, non-profit directors paid with federal funds…that think they can dehumanize, malign and demean the historic black First Lady for no reason – other than she’s black…
It sure doesn’t help that any time the dehumanization of FLOTUS is mentioned, folks are quick to tell you how ‘strong’ she is and how she can ‘handle’ it…
As if…
This is how they start projecting this faux-concept of ‘strength’ on even young black girls…as a way to beg off intervening and stopping their brutalization…because, she’s ‘strong’…it is also this fake idea of ‘she’s strong, she can handle it’, that allows a grown man to manhandle a young girl in this manner, and for the slightest of reasons…and in ways he would never handle any other kid of any other race…because he sees her stereotypically, not as a kid, but as one of those ‘strong black women’ often stereotypically perpetuated …that is how they end up killing black kids in park…or hauling of and killing a young woman for smoking in her own car…
How often we hear those descriptions of black women as ‘strong’…supposedly as a compliment…but really more as a preamble to a slur…but always as a preemptive excuse and cover for black men – who ironically get to enjoy the quick interjection of their black wife, sister, mother, friend, to defend and protect them when need be….excuse and cover for society in general and for these black men, to always, always turn their back and run…shirk their most important responsibilities as men – to protect their black women…
It’s shameful…and infuriating…and disheartening…
The truth, nothing but the whole TRUTH.
This video enrages me to no end.
He had no right to hold her there. he wasn’t armed. This white PO is the CRIMINAL. There I evil in the air, and it must be eradicated.
I don’t know if you saw the tweet from the White House the other day that describes the First Lady pushing Ellen deGeneres as ‘goofballs’…
It was supposed to be funny…but it wasn’t to me…not in the least…
I was livid and so were my family and friends …
If this White House had spent the past 8 years aggressively protecting and defending this endlessly maligned and dehumanized historic First Lady…
Taking the time to not only push back at and correct falsehoods and malicious attacks designed to hurt her and chip away at her, her reputation and her popularity…if the White House had done for the First Lady what they’ve been doing for the President….obsessively putting out warm and positive and pleasant and very carefully and strategically choreographed and presented and circulated images, photographs, videos of him at all times and every opportunity they had…to bolster his positive image and to help solidify the positive feelings and images and narratives about him…
If that had been done even to a less extent for her as well….something that could have very easily been achieved…instead of practically suppressing and deliberately blurring and erasing the best and most positive images and narratives of this historic First Lady…even as they touted everyone and their mama but not the President’s own wife…
Perhaps if the White House had been consistently conscious of, and conscientious about protecting this historic black FLOTUS, maybe I wouldn’t have minded the little ‘joke’ they put out about her as a ‘goofball’ after 8 long years…
https://mobile.twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/814991212470013952
WTF is he about? What a shit. Just because he can and is incompetent and brutal!
CHECK!!!
https://twitter.com/3ChicsPolitico/status/816342603151065088
https://twitter.com/3ChicsPolitico/status/816358954687197188
Waiting on a statement from @jcpenney about one of their white male employees putting a young teen girl in headlock. We need answers.
https://twitter.com/askjcp/status/816325125566033922
https://twitter.com/3ChicsPolitico/status/816326381994917888
https://twitter.com/3ChicsPolitico/status/816326864553803780
the JC Pennys employee is an adult. He instigated, agitated, and assaulted that girl.
Fire that SON OF A BITCH AND SUE
Where’s the “safety pin” wearing brigade?
Hi, Coach4divas. I’m so angry. My blood is boiling.
Who is this SOB? Putting a child in a headlock? Mofo racist sob.