For Black women in leadership, must degradation come with the territory?

For Black women, is degradation by others the price of leadership?

I have been thinking about this lately as I cover College Park. And especially on Saturday, when a controversial Facebook account that is critical of College Park Mayor Bianca Motley Broom referred to her as a “whore.”

The Facebook page, which is administered by Demetris Taylor, has at least one poster who uses the pseudonym Webster Wallace. A Sept. 12 post under that moniker demeaned the mayor, as Taylor himself has frequently done in videos on the page.

Motley Broom is an elected official, and her decisions, her leadership and her record are all fair game for scrutiny.

But when did holding a woman accountable become a license to sexually degrade her?

Black women should not have to be personally degraded as the price of being visible, powerful, outspoken or in leadership.

And that is why these posts bother me.

This is not simply about disagreement with the mayor. There is a line between criticism and degradation. There is a line between disagreeing with a woman and calling her a whore.

But in these days and times, that line keeps moving.

I began reporting on College Park in 2023. There were discrimination lawsuits involving current and former employees and visible friction on the council between Motley Broom and Councilmen Roderick Gay and Joe Carn.

When a new council took office in January 2024, Gay and Carn, along with Councilwomen Jamelle McKenzie and Tracie Arnold, voted to control how much the mayor can weigh in on agenda items during meetings. 

SaportaReport has extensively covered how extreme the political environment in College Park has become.

But there is a difference between disagreeing with the mayor on an issue and attempting to create a degrading public image of her through the kind of posts that have appeared on Everything College Park.

I am unwilling, as a journalist, to pretend that degradation and accountability are the same thing.

And there is irony in all things College Park. Residents close to Councilwoman Jamelle McKenzie have alleged that she is connected to Webster Wallace and have shared text messages on social media that they say support that contention.

McKenzie has repeatedly denied being connected to Webster Wallace or to the manipulated images of the mayor posted on Everything College Park last week.

Why does any of this matter to me?

Partly because I do not like watching anyone be deliberately diminished or dehumanized. There is something in me that responds when I see another person being treated as though their humanity and dignity do not matter.

But I would be less than honest if I did not acknowledge something else. I am a Black woman. And when I see another Black woman being publicly degraded, there is a recognition that feels closer to home. She does not have to be my friend. I do not have to agree with her. I do not have to have any personal relationship with her at all. There is still a sense of kinship.

That does not mean abandoning scrutiny. It does not mean withholding criticism. It means recognizing the humanity of the person being criticized and refusing to accept humiliation as a substitute for accountability.

But this should matter to anyone who cares about the normalization of hate. 

Because what we passively accept makes room for the next thing. We are at a point now where what once seemed outrageous is ordinary.

But the next thing may not simply be offensive. It may be dangerous.

You can oppose someone’s politics. You can question their decisions. You can criticize their leadership. But there should still come a point when people across those divisions are willing to look at something and say: “This is not okay.”

I believe the people who traffic in this kind of degradation are counting on that not happening.