Team Jordyn All Day

When news first broke about the Jordyn Woods, Tristan “Third Trimester” Thompson, and Khloe Kardashian love triangle, my first thought was that the tea was too piping hot not to follow and devour every messy and salacious detail. But as weeks dragged on, I started to notice how Woods became the villain in this melodrama and not Thompson. I mean this is Tristan Thompson we’re talking about, he earned the nickname Tristan “Third Trimester” Thompson because he was caught cheating on Khloe Kardashian while she was 9-months pregnant. This is the 2nd occurrence as Thompson left his then pregnant girlfriend for Khloe Kardashian while she was 9-months pregnant with their son.

With a known record of Thompson’s fuckery, why was Woods catching all the heat? That’s when the light bulb went off...oh that’s right, Woods is a black woman. Malcolm X originally stated and Jada Pinkett Smith quoted during her sit down with Woods, “The most disrespected woman in America is the black woman.” We’ve recently bared witness to this after the Surviving R.Kelly documentary came out. R.Kelly sexually assaulted and manipulated numerous young black girls and woman for decades and got away with it because his victims were black girls. Had it been white girls, R.Kelly would have served 10 years of his life sentence by now. Black women are experiencing maternal mortality rates at a greater rate than their white peers because doctors won’t believe them when they report something wrong. The drama between Woods and the Kardashian’s may seem minuscule compared to these instances of implicit bias against black women, and it is, but it still applies.

Let’s compare the latest Kardashian plot line to some of their previous morally questionable behavior, in most cases the Kardashian’s have always enjoyed the luxury of presumed innocence or wrong doing. Take Kylie Jenner for example. Kylie Jenner getting lip injections at a ripe young age was no big deal even though Kylie Jenner has a millions of young, impressionable followers across her social media platforms. The same young followers, who sparked the “Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge,” where teenagers inserted their lips into a shot glass or bottles, sucked the air out of the vessel causing their lips to swell; but in worst cases their lips would end up bruised and blistered. What the Kardashian/Jenner spin machine made out to be a harmful act to boost Kylie’s self-esteem turned out to have real and harmful repercussions for the average teenger.

Not to only harp on Kylie Jenner, but we can’t forget about her most egregious act, dating rapper Tyga when Kylie Jenner was 17 and Tyga 24; that’s considered statutory rape in California. Now I put the responsibility more on Tyga then on Kylie, however the Kardashian/Jenners defended the relationship, stating that because Kylie Jenner was running a billion dollar cosmetics line, she was “mature for her age,” and could handle a relationship with a grown man. In this instance “mature” was a cop out for deplorable behavior, where as in Woods’ case, she should have been mature enough to know better. Kourtney Kardashian wasn’t too mature to know better before getting breast implants at 22, Kim Kardashian made a young and stupid decision to get married at 19, and Khloe Kardashian’s was just a kid when she got her DUI at age 24. At 21, Woods made a grown woman mistake, but at 21 she deserves the privilege of bouncing back from that mistake. As a black woman, it’s clear that she doesn’t get that luxury.

For any black man who shrugs off they’re male privilege, they have only to look at Thompson as their martyr, while Woods has been subject to the worst of online vitriol, Thompson has wiped his hands clean of the whole situation and was last seen eating penne alla vodka with his boys while Khloe Kardashian (who is 20 years Woods’ senior) and her crew have been dragging Woods all over social media.

I’m happy that Jada Pinkett Smith invited Woods to use her platform to share her side of the story; another example of black women being there for black women because we are very short of allies. No matter how close Kylie Jenner and Woods were, we know Kris Jenner wasn’t about to come to Woods’ defense.

Let Woods be another example why black girls aren’t fast, why black girls aren’t mature, why black girls who are developing and learning the world and the role that they play in it deserve the same benefit of the doubt that their peers do.