During the heyday of Scandal, Papa Pope’s monologue to Olivia about being twice as good to get half as far had Black women around the country nodding their heads in agreement and solidarity. Olivia, who heretofore, been seen as the epitome of successful womanhood (presidential affair aside) with badass suits, coats, and even more impressive connections wasn’t flabbergasted, but resigned. She was smart, upper upper middle class and beautiful, she probably could have been First Lady, Secretary of State, or more, but she Papa Pope only saw her as the elite’s clean-up woman, a new-age maid to clean-up political mess. She was good, but not good enough. Harsh.
The thing is, Papa Pope wasn’t entirely wrong. His expectations may have been sky high, but he was right about being twice as good, but he faltered in the reasoning why. That extra effort isn’t just about gaining the success, money or recognition our non-Black peers attain, it’s about survival. It’s about sidestepping the subconscious American notion that Black women are expendable. Don’t believe me. Take a look around the news today and don’t forget your lawmakers like Bill Cassidy here who said, ““If you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear.” You can read more about good ole Bill in Vanity Fair’s article:
“About a third of our population is African American; African Americans have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. So, if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear. Now, I say that not to minimize the issue but to focus the issue as to where it would be. For whatever reason, people of color have a higher incidence of maternal mortality.” More
That twice as good advice is a survival tactic.
The internet is ablaze with the news that the next new blockbuster novel, Shy Girl by Mia Ballard was written with the aid of AI. The book was released in the UK and did well and was poised to do even better with an even bigger marketing push in the US when whispers about the book being written by AI turned into roars. When the rumors got to big to ignore and the outrage threatened to overtake the release it was pulled. How embarrassing? But these allegations weren’t new. How could the Hachette publishing miss this? They didn’t.
Mia Ballard was the experiment.
Publishing companies have teams of marketing professionals, editors, and legal experts all working in tandem to make sure their properties succeed. The level of scrutiny upon authors and their work as they are acquired and then released is astronomical. I know. I’ve been through it several times. There is no way they did not know that there was something up with the book. Mia Ballard, a Black woman, seemed like the perfect guinea pig to test the public’s tolerance of AI written works. They dressed her up and put a big bow on her neck, told her all her dreams would come true and sent her out into shark infested waters to see what would happen. And it’s no surprise she was eviscerated.
Why would they do that to her? Because she’s expendable. Her skin tells them so.
Now that does not mean I excuse Mia for using AI. There’s no reason she should have ever felt comfortable using it. As a writer, I find it unethical and lazy, but she made the mistake that DC Mayor Marion Barry and Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell made. You see what the white goose is doing and think it’s all good for the Black gander. You’re mistaken.
In an email to The Times late on Thursday night, Ballard denied using A.I. to write “Shy Girl,” contending that an acquaintance she hired to edit the self-published version of the novel had used A.I.
“This controversy has changed my life in many ways and my mental health is at an all time low and my name is ruined for something I didn’t even personally do,” she wrote, noting that she could not elaborate on how the book had been edited with A.I. because she was pursuing legal action. More
Remember, twice as good is a survival tactic. It doesn’t just get you half as far, it keeps you from twice the consequences. Mia’s reputation is ruined. Marion Barry went to jail. And this doesn’t just apply to Black women, it can apply to other minority groups as well. Martha Stewart went to prison for what the men in her tax bracket are making billions doing today (we see you Barron) and there hasn’t even been a serious inquiry.
It’s not just about avoiding bankruptcy or shame, if you aren’t smarter, more wily, more focused than your peers you could lose your life.
Recently, A Georgia woman was charged with murder for using the abortion pill. Despite claims from the pro-life camps about how they would not be pursuing charges for women and they are most concerned with the lives of innocent babies, those of us with uteruses and a good grasp of history know better. The 30,000 foot story is that a woman walks into a hospital with abdominal pain and delivers a baby. The suspect she’s used the abortion pill, mifepristone, and call police. She’s arrested.
Look closer.
There isn’t a toxicology screening for mifepristone. How did they know she took it? She told them. Our good sister was 20-24 weeks along. For her own reasons, which she has a right to, she didn’t think she could continue this pregnancy. If she’d access to care at the 8 week or 10 week mark when she realized she might be carrying things might have been different, but Georgia has a 6 week abortion ban, so early you’d have to know the minute you missed your period, that you were pregnant and get the procedure scheduled. Instead she acquired the pills, we don’t know how, she was way too far in the pregnancy to get them from her doctor. How do we know any of this?
She told them.
She was wild with pain and confusion and fear and (according to the nurses, who could be lying and given the Deep South’s crimes against Black people in general, that is a possibility) confessed. She was in the most vulnerable place a woman can be in and rattled off her guilt and fear and thought that the hospital nurses were there to help and console. She is not to blame. Care is what you expect from health professionals, but as a Black woman you have to be twice as focused, twice as smart, and infinitely more suspicious. Those nurses were not there to help, they turned her in and set off a chain of events that ended up with her in jail for weeks under a murder charge. She is the case they’ve been waiting for. The reckless woman who snuffs out a child’s life for selfish reasons. Never mind that she has two other children. Never mind that she would be the sole provider for the child. They’d been waiting for someone woman-like to offer up as a test case. Woman, with all the body parts of the female sex, but with none of the protections.
She’s become Anarcha Westcott, one of the women J. Marion Sims experimented upon without anesthesia to learn the obstectric techniques that would save White women from death and infertility during the antebellum period. There’s a statue to his genius on the University of South Carolina grounds.
She’s joined Adriana Smith, the pregnant Black nurse who came to the hospital, the hospital in which she worked, because she had a massive headache and was turned away, only for that complication to later kill her. Instead of letting her pass, her corpse was kept alive in a Frankenstein-like experiment to see if a human body could be an incubator for a child. Baby chance has yet to leave the hospital. He was born in June.
Black women don’t get to be vulnerable. When we ask for help, too many take it as an opportunity to harm. We don’t get to make mistakes, it will cost us our livelihoods. We can’t slip, it will cost us our lives.
So what do you do with that? As Black women, we continue to hold fast to that advice, we teach our daughters to do the same. Is it exhausting? Yes. Will it take years off our lives? Absolutely, but we’ll be here. Everyone else? Your job is to question. If there are very few Black women in your spaces and some new potentially disastrous opportunity appears, look closely at who is chosen for that opportunity. Speak up!
We’re past the time of allies. We need accomplices.
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