Getting Woke: White Feminism, Brock Turner, and Crystal Mangum

If you’ve been loud about Brock Turner, but were silent about Crystal Mangum, then Sit. Down.

I have some questions for you.

I realize that the Duke Lacrosse players never went to trial because Mike Nifong withheld evidence that would clear them. I realize and acknowledge that they were railroaded by the D.A. and the police.

But I’m not talking about them today.

I want to talk about Crystal Mangum, the alleged victim on that night in Durham.

When you search for Crystal Mangum online, you’ll quickly learn about her criminal history. You’ll learn of her false allegations, and in the ESPN 30 for 30 Fantastic Lies documentary you will learn how those false allegations nearly ruined the lives of the accused three young men.

I know that feminists have the unfortunate history of assuming the stance as a universal voice for women…all women. Feminists have the unfortunate habit of assuming that the issues that pertain to one group of women (middle-class white ones) are the same issues pertaining to other women (poor ones, and women of color).

Even through seemingly progressive venues who appear to have earned the privilege of “wearing the woke badge” by denouncing Hillary’s nomination and pointing out her particularly privileged form of glass-ceiling breaking, a glaringly White feminism persists.

So as I watch the vehement backlash against Brock Turner and the letters his father and other supporters wrote, as I watch organized feminist groups call to renounce the judge who shamefully gave Brock Turner a ludicrously light sentence, I can’t help but notice this snow White feminism. A feminism that wasn’t silent for Crystal Mangum: but instead of supporting her, used and exploited her to rage against the Lacrosse players.

Here’s what I know about Brock Turner’s victim:

She is strong. She is brave. She is articulate. She is largely anonymous.

Here’s what I know about Crystal Mangum:

She is Black. She was a stripper. She was drunk. She had a criminal history. She had tenuous custody of her children.

I am a proud feminist. But while an understanding of rape culture seems to have permeated our social sphere online and in real life, evidenced by the backlash against Brock Turner’s sentence, I hesitate to join the crowd, particularly in the name of Feminism. I hesitate to join because while we use public rape cases to discuss what rape is and whose fault it is and is not, I can’t help but think back to Crystal Mangum. I just wonder where all my white feminists were not when that alleged rape happened, but long before.

Crystal Mangum was flawed and broken in a lot of ways before she ever even came close to the Duke Lacrosse party. Systemically marginalized and segregated, she was abused at the age of 14. She was never validated, she was never believed, and her subsequent relationships were marked with domestic violence.

And, unlike Brock Turner’s victim, she wasn’t anonymous. She was paraded around like a show pony, and like Mike Nifong’s “I dare you…” and “Vote for me.” And while there may not be hard evidence that she was raped by the players, she was nevertheless used.

So while I have read the brave testimony of Brock Turner’s victim, and I have read the vehement backlash to his father, and while I am sickened by the brazen demonstration of white male privilege, I am saddened and enraged by the message of white Feminism. Black bodies continue to be subjugated by white people: tokenized as Crystal Mangum was for Mike Nifong, mystified, sexualized, used in a social slavery as mere symbols and representatives.

White feminism needs to go beyond co-opting intersectionality for the fashionability of being “woke”, and instead actually embrace that the lived experiences of women differ across economic and racial divides. Regardless of how unworthy the dominant narrative may deem poor women, poor white women, Black and Brown women, unwed mothers, drug addicts, sex workers, and women with a criminal history, Feminism needs to embrace that rape culture acutely affects these groups long before the act occurs and actually act NOT to change the RESULT of these acts of violence, but INSTEAD act to change the systemic organizations that perpetuate the circumstances that lead to these tragic acts of violence long before they occur.