The Truth We Won’t See! Part 2 – The Double Standard in Accountability

The Silence Around Black Femicide: What We Still Refuse to Confront! 

There is also a clear double standard in how accountability is applied.

When women behave in ways that are harmful, toxic, or disrespectful, there is often quick correction. Real Quick! Quick labeling. Quick distancing. Quick Disconnect, and the label/story about “her” being the problem that comes with that.

But when men behave in harmful ways…especially men who are well-liked, respected, or admired…the response is really different.  The judgement, the anger, the quick action…well, it slows down, Softens, and usually Disappears.

There is always more grace.

More benefit of the doubt.

More willingness to separate the behavior from the man.

And in that gap, their harm is allowed to continue.

The Unspoken Truth: The Lack of Collective Protection

Here is the truth that many struggle to say out loud:

Black women have not been collectively protected within our own community! Period.

Protection exists, but it is inconsistent. It is situational. It is dependent on individuals, not upheld as a shared value. So, we pray that their family is “good” or “healthy”, or at the very least cares how they treat you…and that matters.

Because collective protection means that harm against us, as a group, won’t be tolerated, regardless of who commits it. It means intervention is expected. It means accountability is not optional. But this is often not the case for us.

For Black women, our value has often been tied to our strength, our resilience, and our ability to endure…the whole Strong Black Woman narrative…certainly not to our right to be protected, or to the fact that we even need or should require it from our own, at least.

We are expected:

To carry.

To fix.

To hold.

To survive.

While we remain unsafe, often emotionally, and many times physically, often unsafeguarded.

The Triple Burden Black Women Carry

And this is where it just gets deeper. When we are in a relationship where we are being harmed by Black men, we’re not just dealing with the harm itself.

We’re carrying a triple burden:

Navigating our own safety and emotional well-being.

Managing the psychological impact of the abuse.

All while being acutely aware of what it means for him, and for the community, if we tell the truth.

We know how Black men are treated when they are labeled as violent or abusive.

We know the consequences they can face.

We know how quickly narratives can spiral.

So we hesitate.

We protect.

We minimize.

We stay silent longer than we should.

Not just out of love…but out of awareness.

And that awareness becomes a weight.

When This Becomes Personal

This is not abstract for me.

I lived this.

I was in a relationship where I experienced years of verbal and emotional abuse. And I didn’t tell it. I protected him. I covered for him. I even lied…because I didn’t want to damage how he was seen, and I didn’t want to sit in the embarrassment of what had been done to me nor the humiliation of what experiencing that repeatedly felt like.

And if I’m being honest, I also didn’t want to lose what I had built.

A family. A blended life. Children…mine and his…that I loved deeply. Walking away didn’t just feel like leaving a relationship. It felt like dismantling something I had invested my heart in.

Even when his behavior crossed lines, disrespecting me and at times my children, in ways I knew were unacceptable…even when there were moments that felt volatile enough to make me question where things could go…I still found myself weighing not just if I should leave, but what it would cost to do so.

That is the part people don’t talk about.

It’s not just about recognizing harm.

It’s about navigating everything tied to it.

Why This Conversation Remains Incomplete

If we are serious about addressing Black femicide and intimate partner violence, we cannot stop at awareness.

We have to confront the ecosystem:

The protection of men, Black men particularly, over truth, and the blind eye we intentionally turn toward it if they are men of community “value”.

The silence we keep that shields harm being done.

This BS expectation of the cape we should wear, and the saviors we are required or expected to be while we endure.

The double standard of accountability in the Black community.

The internal conflict Black men face, and often avoid, so we carry and manage it for them, even when it harms us.

And the psychological burden Black women carry in loving, protecting, and surviving at the same time.

Until those layers are addressed, the conversation will continue to feel incomplete, no matter how many articles are written.

A Necessary Shift

This is not about attacking Black men.

It is about calling for full accountability with love and within community.

Because protection cannot and should not mean silence.

Respect cannot mean avoidance of the truths we know and refuse to see.

And love cannot require harm as its proof, because we endured and dared to “love him through it”.

If we are going to talk about saving Black lives, that has to include Black women, not just in language, but in action, in accountability, and in cultural expectation.

Otherwise, the conversation will fade…And the conditions will remain, just as they already have!