R. Kelly and the Cost of Black Protectionism

There is still so much to unpack about Lifetime’s docuseries Surviving R. Kelly, a horrifying six-part examination of the sexual-abuse allegations that have followed the superstar singer for more than two decades. The stories of predation told by the women who appear on-screen—some of whom were related to people who worked for Kelly—are vomit-inducing. The heart sinks as one survivor after another describes being manipulated, controlled, and sometimes beaten, by Kelly, whose music career has largely remained in good standing despite the presence of such troubling accusations.

As awful as those accounts are, what’s most haunting is the resignation in these women’s voices. They seem to have arrived at the painful conclusion that regardless of the trauma they had endured, their experience would never, speaking to the prolonged indifference to Kelly’s alleged behavior.