A Tale of Two Mothers: Reflections

Whatever gripes my friends and I have about our parents (from the "grandmother pressure" - "When are you going to settle down?," which translates to "When am I going to get some grandkids?" - to independency issues - a friend of mine is ready to strangle her father now that she has moved back in with him, and no that's not a real threat, and her friend has neverending drama after going into business with her mother), none of us doubt for one moment that they don't love us and that we don't love them. That, if anything heinous ever happened to us, our parents would move heaven and earth to avenge the crimes committed against us. And, so it is with deep uneasiness that I offer this reflection on motherhood and the way it has shaped one of the heinous incidents this week: the West Virginia torture case involving a young black female victim and white supremacist perpetrators.

One of my first feelings of uneasiness when the story broke pertained to the releasing of the victim's name and photo. It was an uneasiness Professor Black Woman and others in the blogosphere also expressed, but far too many commentators dismissed our concerns by reminding us that the victim's mother, Carmen Williams, gave her permission to do so. I'm still not comfortable with this, but it dawned on me that no one else thought to question this power dynamic precisely because everyone is invested in the idea that our mothers always have our best interests at heart.

Then, I came upon an intelligent commentary in the Chicago Sun-Times, which I excerpted here on my blog because it offered a completely different and political perspective in which Carmen Williams was likened to Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till: a tale of two mothers who refused to hide their children's tortured bodies and used the evidence of their bodies as a political act against injustice.

The article definitely made me go, Hmmmmm, that's an enlightening perspective. Alas, it wasn't long before I finally came up with a rebuttal:

But Emmett Till was dead! Carmen Williams' daughter is still alive and needs to be protected!

And therein lies the the heart of the matter for me. One act is motivated by the need for a mother to not cover up, to not follow the rules of polite society - which dictated that her son's deformed and mutilated body be presented in a closed coffin at a public funeral. Mamie Till-Mobley's insistence that her son's body be presented in an open coffin was a refusal to be polite because society was not polite and she would not corroborate in the pretense of politeness; she would instead shine a spotlight on the outrages and monstrosities of a racist society, as evidenced by Emmett Till's horrible corpse.

The other act by Carmen Williams leaves me with a very different impression. It wasn't until yesterday that I tuned into a CNN video online featuring an interview with the victim's mother. I did not see an outraged or devastated mother letting the world into the tiny hospital room where her injured daughter lay so that we could witness the crime done against her. No. I saw a mother not protecting her daughter. I saw a mother letting in the Media Vultures into that tiny hospital room, where her daughter needs rest and healing and perhaps hasn't gotten much with all this intrusion from the press. I saw a mother be interviewed by various press folk, only glancing at her daughter once while soaking in all the reporters' questions. I saw a mother leak out unflattering things about her daughter - from insinuating that she's got "mental issues" and "learning disabilities" (i.e. She's stupid, y'all!) to further insinuating that she'd "go missing for weeks, running around town" (i.e. She's a no good trifling so-and-so, y'all!) - things that may come back to haunt the victim as the defense team builds a case that would throw doubt on her testimony in court. I saw a mother caretaking while subliminally blaming her daughter for what had happened. I saw a mother not protecting her daughter and turning her over to the wolves.

Something else. I saw a daughter silenced. I saw a daughter lying in bed, filing her nails nonchalantly, pretending that she didn't care her mother and the press were talking about her as if she weren't even in the room. I saw her furtive glances into the camera while it objectified and fragmented parts of her body (close-ups on her shaven head, the bruises on her neck, her blackened eyes staring blankly out at us). I saw a daughter shut down, and I saw a daughter who is used to shutting down, making herself small and invisible. And, I hate to say it, but in that little TV interview, I also was able to comprehend how and why this victim got involved with someone like Bobby Brewster.

Am I being harsh? Perhaps I am, but therein lies my uneasiness.

In speaking with a friend about this, she says that we should view this as a poor, rural black woman, who is not used to anyone being interested in what she has to say, responding accordingly to the press. It's her moment in the spotlight, albeit a horrendous moment in the spotlight, so we can't overlook that people behave differently when confronted with such national attention. This isn't to say that this mother doesn't love her daughter, but it does mean that we must keep in mind that not all mothers have their children's best interests at heart.

On the other end of this crime is the Mother-from-Hell, Frankie Lee Brewster, who seems to be the mastermind behind the torture, with a violent past, which includes killing an elderly woman in her care and serving six years for the crime (after pleading guilty to manslaughter), while her son Bobby killed his stepfather at the tender age of 12 while she was behind bars. In addition to this violent past (because, we can only imagine what kind of domestic violence sparked a young Bobby Brewster to kill his stepfather), her son already chased her with a machete earlier this year, let alone the domestic violence dispute he had with the victim.

It's all so depressing and oddly familiar in many violent homes across America. And, contrary to people's shock and surprise that a white supremacist would be involved with a black woman, these relationships happen all the time. I tell the few black people who keep asking, why was she involved with these kinds of white folks, "Well, what are we saying? How often have we found ourselves in a situation where we're the only black person in a room full of white people? Did it ever occur to us that they would lock the door behind us, tie us up in a basement, and subject us to week long torture?" (Granted, other things occur to us, like waiting for somebody to say something racially offensive, thus prompting our early exit from the meeting, the party, the holiday outing, etc, but at least we have the freedom to leave, relatively speaking because we know the fallout when we act up in front of the white people we work with or hang out with.) And, if both the Williams and Brewsters are poor and rural people, I doubt these white people look any scarier to the Williams than, say, the white folks I hang out with, who are all urban, upwardly mobile, professorial, and far more capable of rhetorical violence than physical ones (I hope), but who I'm sure would nonetheless appear far more powerful to rural black folks than the Brewsters (because, generally speaking, they are).

Moreover, contrary to the idyllic myth of loving parents and loved children is an all too familiar story of neglected and tortured children who grow up to be damaged adults who do awful things to each other and continue the vicious cycle by treating the children that they have accordingly. Somewhere in the midst of neglect, hurled insults and put-downs, and unspeakable child abuse, Frankie Lee Brewster's son and Carmen Williams's daughter found their way to each other, and the violent wheels were set in motion.

And now the legal wheels are set in motion as to how this case will be treated, and how public opinion will influence the courtroom drama that will eventually prevail. My uneasiness is not one based on believing that, somehow, new details will throw doubt on the victim's credibility. There are enough witnesses that can corroborate her torture and abuse. Even so, I have noted that some are already raising the specter of Tawana Brawley and Crystal Gail Mangum because, those who are invested in "white innocence" must discredit a black woman's story: whether it's in calling her a "liar" or in simply pointing to the fact that "she made very bad judgments" and, somehow, this is all her fault (i.e. she used to date Bobby Brewster).

Meanwhile, a mother lets in the media vultures to stare (without much sympathy, I might add) at the mess her daughter has become. Another mother rallies her family around her to engage in unspeakable acts of violence. What motivates both women is a larger system of poverty, white supremacy, misogyny, militaristic violence, and the myth of the great American Dream for which both groups have been shut out. How easy it is to turn them into the latest reality TV stars of a very badly conceived Lifetime-TV drama-turned-horror flick replete with the most offensive racial stereotypes of country bumpkins, except this is all too grotesquely real, and I'm afraid, not nearly as anomalous as we'd like to believe.

The other myth that we hold dear is the one about motherhood. While most of us can attest to having healthy relationships with our mothers, there are many more who cannot. For every Cindy Sheehan, Mamie Till-Mobley, and Mothers of the disappeared in Juarez and Plaza de Mayo, who become politically active through their motherhood, there are other mothers who are attention-seekers or are irreparably damaged. Yet another issue for feminists to tackle without descending into the easy sexism of our world that loves to blame mothers and blame victims. Behind this West Virginia story is the realization that intersections of race, gender, and class create explosive and violent relationships that many of us are just not ready to explore.