North Texas Daily

“Yeah, you’re right but say it nicer,” is essentially the best way to summarize the words of J. Cole in his recent freestyle rap, “Snow on tha Bluff.” The 35-year-old North Carolina rapper went into the booth to wax poetic about his thoughts on the tone a certain Black woman used to criticize the lack of support from so-called Black conscious rappers.

The Black woman that Cole not-so-subtly talked about in his freestyle was Chicago rapper Noname, who had sent out a tweet calling out certain Black rappers for staying silent about Black Lives Matter, even though they spent years and years profiting off of Black plight in their music.

To tell the truth, whether the song was about Noname or not (which it definitely was), Black women across the United States have the right to be angry — and they shouldn’t be told how to express their anger by men who don’t like their “queen tone.”

Many seem to forget that Black women are simply put, BLACK and WOMEN. Caught at the intersection of both racism and sexism, their burden is heavy. It’s hard and it gets old very fast. Black women deserve to be angry, and that’s what makes the words spoken by J. Cole and others like him so tone-deaf.

Census data from 2005 to 2010 showed higher rates of rape for Black women and girls over the age of 12 than for white and Latina women and girls, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Justice. Social scientists argue that Black women’s exposure to sexual violence is both disproportionate and wildly under-reported.

More than four in 10 Black women experience physical violence from an intimate partner during their lifetimes. They also experience significantly higher rates of psychological abuse — including humiliation, insults, name-calling and coercive control.

Oluwatoyin Salu was kidnapped, raped and murdered just because she rejected having sex with the man coming on to her. She went to his home, trusted him with her safety and she was still taken advantage of. Reading that should anger you. Riah Milton and Dominique “Rem’Mie” Fells, two Black trans women, were murdered this week. You should be enraged reading that. Even more infuriating was that Milton was lured to her death in a robbery gone wrong. This is all unacceptable. 

But instead, let’s make passive-aggressive jabs at a Black woman during a week in which Black women’s abuse and forced silence has been a pressing topic. Cole isn’t a monster and “Snow on tha Bluff” was never meant to be malicious in any way. While his song is introspective, and he admits humility, he also admitted that his ego has more priority than the fight that is much bigger than him.

Black women are dying in the streets. Their tone should be the last thing anyone should worry about right now.