By Daniel Johnson
Scholar Henry A. Giroux’s work Stormy Weather: Hurricane Katrina and the Politics of Disposability positions disposability politics strictly as it relates to those who were seen as disposable by the state during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. However, disposability extends beyond state (in)action considering that the state is not the only entity capable of deciding when, where, and how to throw away individuals.
Giroux says as much in an interview
As we have seen with the brutalizing racist killing of [B]lack youth in the United States, disposability targets specific individuals and social spaces as sites of danger, violence, humiliation, and terror. This is most evident in the rise of a brutal punishing-incarceration state that imposes its racial and class-based power on the dispossessed, the emergence of a surveillance state that spies on and suppresses dissenters, the emergence of vast cultural apparatuses that colonize subjectivity in the interests of the market, and a political class that is uninterested in political concessions and appears immune from control by nation states.
As a collective society of individuals however, we all make choices on whom to throw away or whom to label unredeemable. With the positioning of one Jahsey Dwayne Ricardo Onfroy, better known as rapper Xxxtentacion, I maintain that as Black men, we are not afforded the luxury of simply discarding Xxxtentacion and others like him because we have not collectively dealt with the Jahseys in our communities.
Last month, when Jahsey Onfroy was killed in an apparent robbery-murder, many cisgender heterosexual Black men honored and sympathized with him both online and in real life. At his vigil in Los Angeles, Geneva Ayala, Onfrey’s girlfriend and survivor of his sadistic abuse, was reportedly prohibited from paying her respects after rabid fans intimidated her.
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Some of us asked (if not demanded) sympathy for the young rapper, in that he was not given time to “change” from his violent past, despite how deeply sadistic and chillingly disturbing his offenses were.
There were also some of us who chose to simply dispose of Onfrey in order to distance ourselves from his violent queer-antagonism and misogynoir, thus showing ourselves as “allies” to Black women and queerfolk. Despite our attempts at self absolution, he was still heralded as an impressive young artist despite his sadism because Black men, by and large, supported him.
Black women are particularly left vulnerable by our misogynoir no matter how much we posit that we don’t know anyone like Onfrey. Onfrey is us and lives among us, and this unsettling truth is an inescapable reminder that our allyship to Black women and queerfolk is not disposability of men like us, but deep and uncomfortable confrontation towards those that are.
Often, stories of abusive men killing Black women and queerfolk dominate our social media feeds. Black men often murder Black women, and while we can account for how, in a segregated society, we are more likely to experience crime and violence from those in our racial group, it cannot be ignored or minimized the extent to which Black men are violent towards Black women.
The violence Black women experience from Black men has inspired many Black women to say “men are trash” to call into account the men in their lives (who are presumably Black) who take part in a range of misogynoiristic behavior.
I do not take offense or umbrage at Black women who say men are trash, and their engagement in this viral, culturally significant expression is not an example of disposability politics given that in this dynamic, Black women are the oppressed population and Black men are doing the oppressing. When Black women say “men are trash,” such is an act of reclamation, not disposability.
In our attempts to be supporters of Black women, we can make the mistake of falling into practicing disposability politics ourselves. Onfrey is only the most recent example that we can learn to do better from. We cannot neglect the fact that he was a reflection of our own violently queer-antagonistic and misogynoiristic behaviors. We are not divorced from him and thus cannot dispose of him.
Likewise, Black men face very little, if any, collective accountability because even though it’s known that we are abusers to our friends, families, acquaintances, and romantic partners, there never seems to be any kind of broad community support for the lives and well being of Black women.
The reasons why there lacks community accountability for Black men who are violent towards Black women and queerfolk are sprawling and can serve as an article in its own right. For the purposes of brevity, here I name that this lack of community accountability for Black men comes down to the harrowing extent to which misogynistic hatred of non-cishet men runs deep in how communities are structured, to the point where cishet men confronting violent cishet men is not celebrated in masculinist valor and is ultimately dissuaded.
It is in this context of holding the community accountable that I believe that scholar and professor Josie Pickens speaks from when she says
To be honest, I wish folks loved Black men more- enough to demand accountability and healing and change from them. All these rappers eulogizing XXX might have been able to save his life had they checked him on his viciously toxic behavior. But since we condone (and even celebrate, tbh) violence against women and queer folks, I suppose checking him wasn’t a priority. Especially since his violent behavior helped catapult him towards “stardom.” And now y’all want to chastise women and queer folk who don’t have a tear to shed on XXX’s behalf? We good luv. Enjoy.
How dare we self righteously demand the labor, forgiveness, or empathy from women and queerfolk who’ve been a target of Onfroy and the Onfroys among and within us? The circumstances of his murder are tragic and do not excuse his violence, nor is it requisite that we sanitize his legacy given the horrific nature of his death. Living under patriarchy affords men, even Black men, the ability to escape accountability when we commit violence against women, queerfolk, and non-men, even in death.
Onfroy’s violence exists on the same misogynoirstic spectrum that Robert Kelly’s does, and the collective non-response to Kelly’s long documented abuse is similar to how we’ve excused Onfrey’s. Robert Kelly’s formidable career has survived despite inarguable evidence that he targets and sexually exploits young Black women and girls. His nauseating marriage to songstress Aaliyah at fifteen years old is forever seared in Black American cultural memory.
As Black cisgender heterosexual men, we can no longer call upon Black women, queerfolk, and non-men to demand mourning or grief when their abusers – us – die, regardless of how violent and unfortunate the circumstances of the death is. We do not get to dispose of Onfroy because we have not disposed of those who mirror him in our communities and playlists.
It is instead much easier for us to demand the labor of empathy from Black women and femmes than it is for us to grapple with the harm and violence we enact upon them. And we cannot demand such empathy even in our deaths, because we apologize, or we think we have done enough good to offset our violences, or because we believe our violences are stale in the passing of time.
As Pickens stressed earlier, since Black men are not held to account for our intra-communal violence, there is no reckoning or penalties. As it stands, our inability or our refusal to actually and actionably protect Black women from the harms that we do to them continues to result in more Onfreys.
Unless and until Black men are held to account by the community, we will continue to see these kinds of violent interactions with Black women that are undergirded by false notions of masculinity and a violent allegiance with patriarchy.
It is with this in mind that I implore us as Black men to look deeply at Onfroy’s sense of entitlement, his manipulation, his sadistic violence, his hatred of queer Black men and Black women; to look even deeper at ourselves and the values which we have decided comprises masculinity, which is just as dark as Onfrey’s.
In our toxic masculinity, being gay or “soft” is an abomination, and we’re expected to manipulate Black women in order to get whatever you want or can from them; where aggression and violence is an expected mode of expression; the way we recoil when we see gay or queer representation anywhere. And in this innermost reflection is the demand that we are not allowed to dispose that which is us, and instead reckon with who it is we are.
We must correct entitlement, or the belief that we deserve the time and attention of Black women just because they are near us. We must correct our views about masculinity and our definitions and commitment to “manhood.” Subscribing to a belief that we should measure ourselves by what we do to or what we can take from women is only going to cause more harm to the collective community in the end.
We must correct our predatory practices of manipulating Black women for sexual favors and clout, and instead encourage sexual autonomy for Black women, regardless if we see ourselves benefitting or not.
We must abolish our hatred of queer people. This hatred is a barrier to Black freedom. If we cannot envision Black queerfolk as free, we have never envisioned freedom, only a fun house mirror of white supremacy, in which we reign atop racial hierarchies in place of white men.
We are all potential Onfroys or at the very least potential Onfroy enablers, where we are all too willing to leverage Black women and femmes as sacrifices for our own protection in this violent ass system of oppressions and this is why we cannot dispose of him.
He is a horrifyingly honest reflection of us, and to discard him is to ignore that completely. For the sake of Black women, for the sake of Black queerfolk and other non-men, for the sake of an actual Black community we do not get to merely throw Onfroy away, because until we deal with him, we will continue to create violence for the most oppressed in our communities.
Suggested Reading
“For every white woman who appropriates Blackness, there’s a Black man behind her” – Daniel Johnson, RaceBaitR (June 15, 2017)
“No Matter How Good The Rapper Is, Talent Shouldn’t Trump Human Decency” – Aaron Williams, UPROXX (August 29, 2017)
“Opinion: I Am Not Obliged to Care About the Death of an Abuser” – Christiana Ajai, Affinity Magazine (June 19, 2018)
Daniel Johnson studies English and creative writing at Sam Houston State University. In his spare time, he likes to visit museums and listen to trap music. His work can be found at The Root, Black Youth Project, Racebaitr, Those People, and Afropunk.
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