Miles Davis hit black women, Miles Davis hit a bunch of black women.
He was a literally a pimp during his "heroine daze" that's where he learned to control wives and girl friends that came well after his "heroine daze." He made all of them think he loved them just before he used a fist on them.
"As much as we hate to admit it, romance is a form of emotional power that can be used to control or oppress. We know that Miles heaped all kinds of physical and psychological abuse on the women he romanced, but every pimp knows one cannot rule by force alone. As one real-live pimp explained to a curious sociologist: "Yeah, you got to be cool. You got to make them think that you love them."
Beautiful, intelligent women did not flock to Miles to be terrorized; he made them believe he loved them. Miles was schooled in the art and science of romance, the pimp variety in which violence was part of the process."
Quote from a quasi-forgiveness portrait I'm not buying
And, I don't care what kind of wild, jealous stupidity they had going on on their relationship I don't care how many pictures Cicely posed with him in then or years later. His telling that story in that way says he thought black women ain't sh** and that hitting them made him a big man.
He made good music.
He made good money.
That makes him A-Okay
in the Black Community
no matter what.
Sounds like Cosby Reasoning To Me. And I ain't buying it.
As much as things change they sure DO remain the same.
Don Cheadle has a movie coming out soon about Miles Davis. I don't care how much truth gets told about Miles, this movie is meant to memorialize and idolize. And it will. The ugly will be made to look like it's just part and parcel of being a musical genius, a necessary evil. I'm not going for it even if the women he beat up say "it's an honest portrait of a flawed man."
Miles Davis' music and musical genius doesn't justify anything for me.There are people in hell who have justified torturing people for science who thought their medical discoveries justified the means too. Of course, medical torture and beating someone is not equal. But I'm not going to celebrate either abuser. I know we're familiar with the concept.
There is no discovery or musical genius that would make the above image okay with 99.9% of black folk. And I feel the same way about the images like the one below.
"I didn’t know anything about this until well after I’d already fallen in love with his music. Even his Wikipedia page is suspiciously clean of any mention of tension with his partners. But the evidence is there, if scattered. The women in his life rarely brought it up—perhaps to salvage their own dignity, or maybe because of fear of reprisals. But in a rare interview with The New York Times, his first wife, Frances Davis, recalled, “I actually left running for my life—more than once.” And in his memoir, Miles, he owns up to it himself—though the book review from The Atlantic seems less convinced by his apologies..."
How do you, as a black man, experience oppression, right along side black women, then have the audacity to raise your hand to us, your sisters, using the same damn reasoning as racist whites? That reasoning being: 'I am inherently superior to you therefore I strike you.' I don't care about his damn childhood any more than I care about the childhood of the undercover KKK member's next door.
Maybe I'm wrong about what I imagine will happen after the Miles Davis movie. Maybe they won't justify the beatings with his genius. Maybe a lot of the audience will leave the movie about Miles crying and angry about how ugly that woman beating troll was.
Nah....That's not how you make money in Hollywood, dearest.
Maybe I'm wrong about what I imagine will happen after the Miles Davis movie. Maybe they won't justify the beatings with his genius. Maybe a lot of the audience will leave the movie about Miles crying and angry about how ugly that woman beating troll was.
Nah....That's not how you make money in Hollywood, dearest.
This movie will tell just enough truth to say the truth wasn't erased. But his musical genius will come out on top as the most important thing, more important than the "sistahs" he beat up. (I'd be interested to know if he beat up any of the white women he dated.)
I hope I'm wrong. But I still hope the Miles Davis movie tanks. I hope it's bad so that it disappears and takes Miles the memory of the man along with it into oblivion. But I'm pretty sure the Cosby-type apologists will be out in force to support the movie, the man, and the memory. They always do.
I hope I'm wrong. But I still hope the Miles Davis movie tanks. I hope it's bad so that it disappears and takes Miles the memory of the man along with it into oblivion. But I'm pretty sure the Cosby-type apologists will be out in force to support the movie, the man, and the memory. They always do.
We're going to continue to undermine one another until we insist on his-story and her-story instead of hero-stories.
A LINK TO PEARL CLEAGE'S BOOK:
"MAD AT MILES: A BLACK WOMAN'S GUIDE TO TRUTH"
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