You might recognize Nate Parker from his previous works, ‘The Great Debaters’, ‘Red Tails’ or ‘Beyond the Lights’ or you might even recognize him from his upcoming moving about Nat Turner ‘The Birth of a Nation’. Well when Nate was in college at Penn State he was accused and later acquitted of rape. I don’t know if this news broke yesterday, but that’s when I read it. Coincidentally it was Nate and his roommate (and co-writer of ‘Birth of a Nation’) Jean Celestin who were charged with rape, and in my opinion after reading the court transcripts Nate was only acquitted because he’d had a previous sexual relationship with the victim. Jean got the ‘Stanford Rapist’ sentence, you know something light and not fitting of the crime at all, and for the most part this was brushed under the rug until now. Even the victim’s suicide in 2012 wasn’t mentioned until recently.
I’ve heard people mention that the victim’s brother only came forward to make Nate look bad, to bring bad press to the movie, but I don’t think that’s the case. Whether his sister is alive or not she’s still the victim here, not her attackers. It’s sad that even with all of this progress that’s been made in society there’s still so much victim blaming. And Nate’s situation isn’t the only one. People were screaming over each other blaming Bill Cosby’s victims when all of that came out. I’m talking numerous victims spanning decades and people were saying that the women knew what they were getting into when they went home with him, that they were asking to be drugged and raped. Uh no! No one asks to be raped, that’s literally the exact opposite of the definition.
And don’t get me started on how Chris Brown, R. Kelly, Bebe Winans and Brian McKnight are still being heralded by their fans and the industry after their physical and assault cases. We all know about Chris Brown’s incident with Rihanna and R. Kelly’s sex scandal, but everyone’s favorite 90’s R&B crooner Brian McKnight is a known wife-beater and people seem to conveniently forget that. The same with Bebe Winans! Gospel singer or not, if you put your hands on your wife, that’s domestic abuse.
These guys are incredibly talented. Nate’s been in some really good films and he’s done well in them, Chris was on track to be one of the greatest R&B/Pop artists of this generation. R. Kelly is one of the greats as well, but I can’t listen to “Step in the Name of Love”, “World’s Greatest” or “I Believe I Can Fly” the same way anymore. Shoot, I can’t even support John Mayer financially anymore after I read his comment comparing his penis to a white supremacist, as a way of saying that he only finds white women attractive. There were so many other ways he could’ve phrased that! I’m not knocking his preference, we like what we like and it’s fine that he only dates white women, but he didn’t have to say it like that. Nate’s now on the ever-growing list of entertainers who I can no longer support financially. This means I no longer go to their concerts, buy their albums or see their films in theaters as a way of separating the person from the talent.
Are there any entertainers out there who’s art you love, but them personally? How do you go about separating the talent from the artist?