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The newest Voice issue is on stands and online!
Check out some of our favorite pieces from the issue, read the rest online at georgetownvoice.com
Covers: "Join the Voice!" by Egan Barnitt
Black Girls Need Support, Too
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By Dajour Evans
Content Warning: Sexual assault and abuse
In 2005, MadTV parodied R. Kelly’s urban opera, “Trapped in the Closet,” in a skit called “Trapped in the Cupboard.” Within the first minute of the skit, Jordan Peele, playing Kelly, sings, “A voice calls out ‘hey baby’ / My woman comes in the scene / I think ‘oh, damn girl I wish you were 13.’” The audience roars with laughter, and so did I.
I was eight and with my cousin when I first saw “Trapped in the Cupboard.” The skit parodies the episodic, melodramatic nature of “Trapped in the Closet,” which was common in the many parodies produced at that time. However, “Trapped in the Cupboard” was especially memorable because it made fun of Kelly’s controversial reputation. At the end of the skit, Peele’s Kelly gets arrested and sings “So here we are now / at the end of the story / and I’m going to jail / This time not for statutory.”
This January, Lifetime released a six-part documentary called Surviving R. Kelly. This docuseries features interviews from former employees of Kelly, music journalists, psychologists, and, most importantly, survivors of Kelly’s sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. The interviews shine a light on the harrowing abuse that Kelly has subjected young black girls and women to for almost three decades—three decades in which his career continued to flourish.
Accounts of possible mistreatment against young girls first reached the media in 1995 when Vibe magazine published a copy of Kelly’s marriage license to the R&B singer, Aaliyah. The marriage certificate lists Aaliyah’s age as 18, but she was actually 15. Kelly was 27. The marriage was annulled a year later. Around the same time Kelly released, “I Believe I Can Fly,” and despite the clear offense of marrying a girl well under the age of consent, it became one of his universally-loved songs.
In December 2000, Jim Derogatis published a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, detailing allegations that Kelly had sexual relations with girls under the legal age of consent. A month later, a leaked videotape appeared to show Kelly urinating in the mouth of a 14-year-old girl—and then raping her. He was indicted in 2002 for child pornography, the same year he released “Ignition (Remix),” which is without a doubt his most successful song, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for five consecutive weeks. The trial didn’t begin until 2008, and the jury eventually found him not guilty. In the meantime, countless young girls and women continued to come forward with lawsuits and allegations against him. But no direct action was taken.
Considering Kelly’s decades of abuse, his lack of accountability becomes clearer when we think about the ways in which society views black girls. In the second installment of Surviving R. Kelly, an older white man who was on the jury for Kelly’s trial states that he did not believe the girls who came forward because he did not like the way they talked, the way they dressed, or their hair. In other words, their blackness.
A 2017 study from Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality reported that black girls are likely to be seen as less innocent than white girls from as early as age five. This perception, what the report calls “adultification,” leads adults to believe that black girls need less support, comfort, and protection than white girls. They are seen as more independent and more knowledgeable about topics related to sex. Black girls being viewed as older than our actual age matters because no one feels they need to protect us.
Kelly’s dozens of victims’ stories, as such, have gone unheard or been completely disregarded. The black community, Kelly’s largest fanbase, continued to buy his music long after the Aaliyah marriage scandal, the videotape leak, the multiple reports of abuse, the lawsuits, and the trial.
Rumors of Kelly’s abuse of young black girls have always been prevalent. I remember watching countless skits poking fun at Kelly’s allegations including “(I Wanna) Pee on You” from Chappelle’s Show and the aforementioned “Trapped in the Cupboard.” Shows like The Boondocks took a more satirical look at Kelly’s reputation and the way the black community largely ignored it in favor of dancing to “Step in the Name of Love” at every family function. One Surviving R. Kelly episode is titled “Hiding in Plain Sight,” and it is devastatingly true: Kelly’s abuse has never been a secret. We remain complicit in supporting a predator and sexual abuser. That must change.
I think back to a younger me who laughed at the tape scandal, a situation that was very real for a 14-year-old girl, and I feel immense shame. We must not continue to support Kelly by listening to his music. We, as a community, have to hold ourselves accountable by removing his music from our devices, by no longer playing “Step in the Name of Love” at family functions, and by supporting #MuteRKelly, a movement spearheaded by black women that aims to cancel Kelly concerts, stop radio stations from playing his music, and ultimately bring Kelly to justice.
However, Kelly cannot be brought to justice by black people alone. If you are a non-black person who has not heard of Kelly’s decades of abuse, it’s important to think critically about why. Despite the efforts of the #MuteRKelly movement, journalists like Jim Derogatis who has been following this story since 2000, and the numerous brave women who have come forward and told their stories, many people still remain blissfully unaware.
When the #MeToo movement took off, major news outlets and celebrities spoke out against predators like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. Surviving R. Kelly, however, was largely met with silence from the same platforms and celebrities that spoke out just a year prior. I scrolled through Twitter, browsed major media platforms, looked at my own friends here at Georgetown, and found the silence to be the most difficult part to process. When I would bring it up in conversation, most friends had no idea this docuseries was even airing. It’s incredibly telling, and endlessly frustrating, that the same outpouring of support for #MeToo is not present when the victims of abuse and assault are inner-city black girls. That must change.
Research Kelly’s past—don’t expect or wait for a black woman to explain it to you. If you can, as it could possibly be triggering for survivors of sexual assault and abuse, watch the documentary in its entirety. These women, these brave survivors, have been ignored for decades and we—all of us—owe them our attention.
I’ve been to enough Georgetown functions to know that “Ignition (Remix)” is a common song on playlists. Delete the song and any other Kelly song you may have on your devices. Follow the #MuteRKelly movement and spread awareness either through social media or personal conversations. Time and time again, black women consistently do the work to not only protect ourselves, but every other demographic in this country— whether it’s through voting or the #MeToo movement, which was started by Tarana Burke, a black woman, to help black girls a decade before the movement became focused on white women.
Black girls’ lives matter, and I urge people to do the work to uphold this fact. As a black woman, it is disheartening to see my non-black friends remain unaware of issues like this because they don’t directly affect their own communities. Enough with the silence, enough with the false ignorance, and enough with not caring about black girls. #MuteRKelly.
As of today, there are still families who have not seen their daughters in years because of Kelly’s abuse. We must mute R. Kelly, and we must ensure that black girls and women are listened to, are believed, and are protected. Black girls need support, too—so start giving us some.
Dajour Evans is a junior in the College and current leisure editor for the Voice.
Lost in Translation
New Language Access Law Makes Strides but Comes Up Short
By Santul Nerkar
Andrea Tacconi remembers a day when a young girl could not get medical treatment at school because her family only spoke Spanish. In Tacconi’s written testimony to the D.C. Council in April 2017, she recounted the incident, which occurred when she worked for Teaching for Change, an educational nonprofit based in the District. To receive treatment for the girl’s fever, her family would have had to fill out English-language forms. When the girl’s mother approached the school to seek a translation from English to Spanish, the school did not have enough Spanish-speakers on its staff to help the family provide documentation for their child, causing the school to deny her treatment.
This story is one of many that have inspired a decade-long struggle to lower the daily barriers for non-English speakers in Washington, D.C. The campaign reached an important milestone last month, when the D.C. Council officially passed the Language Access for Education Amendment Act. The council voted unanimously with one absence to approve the bill, which alters a 2004 law mandating that the D.C. government provide all residents equal access to government activities and services, regardless of their English abilities.
The 2004 bill made the District a pioneer in providing expanded government resources to people identified as Limited English Proficient (LEP). But language access proponents have since grown frustrated with the law’s limitations. Advocates argued that its mandates were not universally enacted by its intended targets, causing the bill to fall short on many of its stated goals to ensure that non-English speakers in the District can access government services. Seven members of the council introduced the 2017 amendment as a corrective measure.
The fight in the District for language access rights is a microcosm of a larger, nationwide push for greater accommodation of non-English speakers.
“These people are largely immigrants who are not English proficient,” said Yemisrach Wolde, coordinator of the D.C. Language Access Coalition. “They are paying their taxes, they’re contributing to society. We have to step away from always pleading that our rights are at least as important as everyone else’s.”
• • •
Importantly, language access is viewed by organizers and advocates as such a fundamental issue that it is separate from the protections against discrimination provided by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that no person shall be discriminated against “on the ground of race, color, or national origin.” Broadly defined, language access in the United States concerns the ability of non-English speakers to take full advantage of services, programs, and activities that English speakers regularly use.
Many states and municipalities have followed federal guidelines on language access, which generally require means to translate documents for essential services and the creation of a language access implementation plan. Some have also mandated different, more expansive requirements for their language access laws, following President Clinton’s Executive Order 13166 in 2000 that required federal agencies to devise language access plans. In Washington, D.C., one part of the 2004 law stipulates that government programs, departments, and services “provide written translations of documents into any non-English language spoken by a limited or non-English proficient population that constitutes 3 percent or 500 individuals” who are served by that agency.
Despite the existing requirements, evidence and trends from the past few decades suggest a greater need for language access in the District and throughout the United States. A report by the Migration Policy Institute found that the adult population in the country identifying as LEP has swelled from 11.6 million in 1990 to more than 22 million in 2015. In the District, foreign-born individuals account for over a third of the population growth since 2007, according to a 2014 report by the Urban Institute.
Today, the demand is even more pronounced, as approximately 95,000 city residents, or roughly 14 percent of the city’s total population, are immigrants. Additionally, no single country of origin comprises more than 16 percent of the foreign-born population. The D.C. Office of Human Rights (OHR), which oversees complaints of violation of the Language Access Act, has identified six languages with a sizable enough population of speakers to necessitate further language access accommodations: Amharic, French, Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Korean.
But even now, 14 years after the first language access bill became law, city and school services are not always available in those languages. Advocates, city officials, and non-English speakers have grown frustrated with the rocky implementation of the law.
Despite an overarching mandate, each individual agency is responsible for funding its own language access services, resulting in an uneven distribution of resources across agencies, according to the Urban Institute report. This decentralization, as well as anecdotal evidence ranging from Tacconi’s testimony to stories of non-English speakers being ignored by D.C. government agencies, demonstrates the challenges that D.C. agencies have faced in providing language access to LEP residents.
Against this backdrop of disappointment with the original law, the D.C. Council passed the amendment, which created several new requirements. The bill increases the number of “covered entities”—programs, departments, and services with “major public contact”—who are subject to the original Language Access Act. Another new condition of the amendment is that public and charter schools have to provide translations of “essential information” to students, parents, and guardians. Additionally, local education agencies, including D.C. public and charter schools, must designate a dedicated language access staff, consisting of a language access coordinator and language access liaison. Other components of the amendment clarify OHR’s complaint filing and appeals procedures and allow OHR to levy $2,500 fines on covered entities for violations of the Language Access Act. In theory, even though agencies are still responsible for funding their own language access divisions, the fines provide greater incentives for compliance with the law.
The nuances of the amendment, as well as its volatile journey, belie its quiet passage in the D.C. Council. Nonetheless, some language access advocates believe the new law is still incomplete. Following the 2004 law, the Language Access Coalition, a group of organizations which promote language access in the District, has pushed for additions to the law. One such proposed addition is a legal cause of action which would allow individuals to take noncompliant organizations to court. The original law was silent on the issue, and the coalition wanted to codify this legal recourse. The new law, however, specifically bars this; instead, OHR has the ability to award the fines it levies to complainants.
The cause of action was one of the primary “teeth” the coalition had been fighting for, and its exclusion from the final version of the law has left some advocates dissatisfied. Allison Miles-Lee, managing attorney for Bread for the City, an advocacy group in the Language Access Coalition, described the reaction as one of discontent.
Wolde was also disappointed with the outcome of the amendment, citing the omission of a cause of action provision as an example of D.C. government shirking responsibility.
“It’s very disappointing,” Wolde said. “Government agencies, again, are trying to be less accountable. A private right of action is supposedly an inalienable right.”
Testimony at D.C. Council hearings from politicians, including Councilman Phil Mendelson, and school officials may have played a role in striking the private cause of action, as well as the elimination of fines for schools. Miles-Lee noted that while private cause of action was in the works, Mendelson advocated for its removal.
“[He] was concerned it would open up the government to being sued constantly,” Miles-Lee said.
Some critics of the new plans for language access coordinators have pointed to the costs they impose on schools that are already strapped for resources. This argument was a part of the
drive toward exempting D.C. public and charter schools from the $2,500 fine. Brian Pick, chief of teaching and learning at D.C. Public Schools, said as much during an April 2017 D.C. Council hearing.
“While federal Title VI already requires school districts to provide information to parents when necessary in their required language, we have overall concerns about the schools’ capacity to translate and pay for the broad range of documents identified,” Pick said at the hearing.
But Miles-Lee is skeptical of claims that the new provisions would create more fines, and thus, more paperwork and overhead
costs for agencies. She said the agencies need to be more willing to adapt to the law’s stipulations.
“The law is what it is, so if you follow the law you’re not going to get fined,” Miles-Lee said. “We’re not creating a new right here for people. That’s already been decided. [Language access is] a right that people have in D.C.”
As for what advocates can continue to do in the meantime, Wolde emphasized the importance of engagement with LEP communities.
“It’s not just about raising awareness,” said Wolde. “It’s about letting people know that they are powerful.”
Zain Al Rafeea in Capernaum.
Capernaum Depicts Life in Lebanon with Haunting Realism
By Maia Farrell
In December, Capernaum (2018) broke ground by becoming the first Lebanese film to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Motion Picture at the Golden Globes. Although the prize was taken by Roma (2018), the nomination was a resounding success for director Nadine Labaki, solidifying her place in the world of film.
Set against a chaotic Lebanese backdrop, Capernaum is a heart-rending tale of child poverty and neglect—two issues that are extremely pertinent in the country’s current social climate. Labaki’s camera follows Zain (Zain Al Rafeea), a 12-year-old boy, as he runs away from home, navigating the Lebanese streets on his own and attempting to sue his parents for bringing him into the world.
The film handles topics such as child marriage, human trafficking, the struggle of being undocumented, and the modern-day realities of Lebanon with care. The on-screen relationships are powerful, making for emotionally raw moments that are particularly present in the dynamic between Zain and Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole), a baby boy who Zain takes care of when his mother disappears. Labaki’s storytelling maintains the childlike nature of Zain’s character as he looks after Yonas, while simultaneously displaying the maturity that such a daunting task requires of him. In a humorous moment, Zain exhibits youthful creativity, placing Yonas into a pot attached to a skateboard to use as a stroller. These tender moments of innocence— moments that remind the audience that Zain is just a kid—are then contrasted with the harsher realities of his circumstances, such as when Zain struggles to provide for Yonas and himself by selling counterfeit prescriptions of strong painkillers to adults.
Largely comprised of amatuer actors, Capernaum features a cast whose real-life stories closely mirror those of their characters. Most notably, Zain Al Rafeea, who portrays the main character of the same name, was a Syrian refugee working as a delivery boy in Lebanon until he was discovered by Labaki on the streets of Beirut. His character is charged with rage—rage that is largely directed at his parents. Al Rafeea’s on-screen presence is haunting, and he excels in embodying Zain’s tough exterior. As his sister Sahar (Haita “Cedra” Izzam) is ripped from his arms, Al Rafeea displays fury in his eyes so powerful that it could only be performed by an actor with his experience of the consequences of poverty.
In an interview with the Voice, Labaki explained that the suggestions the actors brought based on their first-hand experiences were incorporated into the film, regardless of whether they strayed from the original script.
Despite having a phenomenal cast, Capernaum’s plot lacked focus. The film follows a non-linear narrative and is structured around the trial against Zain’s parents. The opening scene takes place in the courtroom, then flashes back to Zain’s chaotic life at home. However, combined with a minimal amount of dialogue, the shifts between these varying time periods confuse the audience as we lose track of the timeline of events. Flashing back to the court scenes disrupts the emotional buildup of Zain’s journey and would have been better placed solely at the end.
Labaki faced the difficult task of creating the beauty and power of movies like Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and Lion
(2016). Both of these films were successful without relying on the tropes of “poverty porn” and its emotional manipulation. Like Capernaum, Slumdog Millionaire is structured around one specific moment, in that case, a game show. Labaki’s similar strategy with the courtroom seems unnecessarily complex.
Her directorial strengths, nonetheless, still manage to shine through. She is able to avoid turning Capernaum into a film that fetishizes poverty. Al Rafeea’s unforgettable performance allows for this, as he is able to create a distinct personality for Zain rather than portraying his character as simply a casualty of his circumstances. With this, the film remains an emotional powerhouse that touches upon the most horrific realities of poverty in Lebanon without using the audience’s guilt as a crutch. Capernaum is a film that calls for change without any of the overpowering emotional manipulation present in poverty porn.
“Not only as a Lebanese artist, but as a human being, I feel responsible to influence change in the way that I know best because I know my voice counts,” Labaki said. “My research helped me identify the problems, and the film helped me highlight them to viewers.”
The harrowing narrative of Zain’s journey successfully sheds light on the larger societal issues in Lebanon. Labaki’s storytelling is exceptional and is not without hints of humor and moments of levity, regardless of the film’s heavy subject matter. Despite its structural faults, Labaki’s seemingly effortless clarity of style, combined with stellar performances from the cast, create a piece that is both moving and painful.
Info Session: Jan. 26 1 - 2 p.m.
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