Women of Color Respond to Hollaback! Harassment Video

*Kudos to Jezebel for doing this! They took the popular Hollaback NYC street harassment video questioned the lack of white men in the piece, as well as the lack of women of color. A woman in the video explains:” This is a video that’s being shown broadly, and it gives the impression that the only predators in New York are men of color, and that is false.” “(The video) is such a specific dynamic and it reinforces so many specific stereotypes.” Watch the video! VL

By Collier Meyerson, Jezebel

Last week, the anti-street harassment organization Hollaback released a video featuring a white woman marching through the streets of New York City for ten hours, and being catcalled by mostly black and Latino men. It frames the woman, an actress named Shoshana Roberts, as perpetually harassed and afraid. That video painted a grim picture of life for women in New York, and it served as a de facto cautionary tale: to avoid black and Latino men at every turn, because from the looks of it, they alone are loathsome predators.

It turns out that the video was edited to exclude most of the white men who hollered at Roberts that day. The video’s producer, Rob Bliss, wrote an explanation on reddit: “We got a fair amount of white guys, but for whatever reason, a lot of what they said was in passing, or off camera.” For whatever reason they were edited from the video, that omission is powerful.

Additionally, black and brown women were excluded, as if we do not exist, or are not affected by street harassment when, in fact, we are more endangered by it.

Click HERE to read the full story and watch the video.

[Screenshot courtesy of Jezebel}

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