Editor’s note: This is a repost of an article posted on January 12, 2021 that I deleted because of its length, and possible inaccuracies. I have since reworked it in light of these problems.
cw: discussions of rape, sexual assault, grooming, child abuse, domestic violence
“The Trial of R. Kelly”, is an episode of the animated sitcom The Boondocks – and specifically, the second episode of its first season. It aired on November 13, 2005, and was based on the then-recent legal issues that American R&B singer R. Kelly faced, specifically allegations of statutory rape of a minor.
Fans of The Boondocks, and more specifically those fans who have and still enjoy this episode credit it for telling “home truths” about unsavory aspects of black culture that black people turn a blind eye to, specifically on the rant by the protagonist Huey Freeman gave on defenders of R. Kelly. They also credit it for making it clear in no uncertain terms that supporting R. Kelly for being a black entertainer is wrong-headed and amoral fourteen years before R. Kelly’s eventual conviction – some even arguing that it helped pave the way to R. Kelly’s fall from grace. The purpose of this post is to argue that The Boondocks, and more specifically this episode, received and continues to receive credit that is almost entirely undue, had several problematic features – including “that Huey speech”, and reflected and reproduced contemporary reactions from American media and entertainment – and was actually quite reactionary in that respect, and not as progressive as its fans like to think.
The basic breakdown
The Freeman family are invited to accompany the Dubois’, in their support of Tom – in his case representing the prosecution against the singer R. Kelly. The Freemans, while interested in coming along, aren’t interested in supporting Tom, and are mostly content to observe at least – Riley in particular is coming along to support R. Kelly, and even questions the basis of Tom prosecuting against him. This sets the tone as to how well the trial will eventually go for Tom, especially faced with a group of R. Kelly supporters, and in the courtoom – a very unscrupulous defense lawyer (based on William Kunstler) who is willing to race-bait and play to the all-black jury at every chance he gets – outright claiming that the accumulated evidence assembled against Kelly is irrelevant in light of the fact that Kelly is a successful black man, while Tom Dubois, the prosecutor, is married to a white woman, and alleging a systematic conspiracy against R. Kelly for his success. After Dubois’ cross-examination of the alleged victim goes poorly (she calls R. Kelly “the Pied Piper of R&B” and repeats Riley’s claim that if she didn’t want to get urinated on, she would’ve “moved the hell out of the way”), R. Kelly is asked by the defense to perform for the court – which the judge not only allows, but dances along to. A frustrated Huey stops the music from being played, and castigates the courtroom for willfully ignoring what R. Kelly was accused of, and supporting him simply because he’s famous. Riley, in response jeers at Huey, demanding that the music is played again. R. Kelly is acquitted of all charges, and a party outside the courthouse ensues. Meanwhile, Robert ‘Granddad’ Freeman strikes an unlikely friendship with the self-hating black man Uncle Ruckus as they play checkers outside – this budding relationship very nearly ends when Robert realises how deep his hatred of black people goes, and is offended enough to leave him, but later takes pity on him, and invites him to return back home with them once the case is finished. A disheartened and defeated Tom Dubois meets up with his wife and daughter and they begin to head back to Woodcrest, as Huey’s narration espouses the view that black people may make disappointing and embarrasing choices, it’s still right to support them. He still thinks that the white man is to blame. End of episode.
Black celebrities, the legal system and public perception
Now that brief synopsis probably gives more of a context to an episode that was supposedly ahead of its time in calling out R. Kelly on his crimes, and his supporters that defended him. I’m sure readers of this blog may be thinking that it brings a different context than the websites that produced articles on the episode in response to R. Kelly’s conviction. But before we really get into that (and we will really get into it), it’s perhaps worth discussing that while The Boondocks rather stridently goes the other way, Black media – particularly in their presentation of the legal troubles of black celebrities, tends to be more sympathetic to the figures embroiled in them, particularly black men – with examples ranging from James Brown, Michael Jackson, Snoop Dogg and Bill Cosby. The reasons for this are fairly obvious when taking into account the long history of how black people are treated by the criminal justice system, and embedded cultural beliefs in America that dehumanises black people and presupposes them as incapable of civil behaviour. As music journalist Dart Adams put it:
“Generally, Black media has treated artists who have been charged with something more forgivingly because they feel they have to, because they’re the only people that are going to do it.”
There are problems that often arise from this particularly when dealing with black celebrities is in the understanding that they have access to capital and usually have connections that are different from many people in general, that they are exceptional in that regard, and that their experiences with the law will be qualitatively different. The failure to take those factors into account, or to assume that race across the board is a sole deciding factor in how someone is treated by the criminal justice system and also the conflation with the media coverage as part of that system, gives rise to a conspiracy theory that the (American) white supremacist system, fearful of the influence and power of this famous black person – often male – has now worked to destroy them after getting the entertainment or whatever cultural product out of them.
The flaws of these beliefs are manifold: and produce questions like “what would be the point of even allowing the rise to that much power in the first place if they’re just gonna ruin them?”, “why does this case supposedly signal anything to black people?”, and so on; but what’s interesting is that the supposition of black capitalism as a legitimately emancipatory project in this belief, the apparent belief that the fame of these black celebrities are in isolation to the white experience as well and that they wouldn’t support them (a view that even in the O.J. Simpson murder case was demonstrably false), and the general mystification of any understanding of the social relations involved that this theory supposedly seeks to clarify. Coupled with this belief is a lack of sympathy, and sometimes even outright hostility to those allegedly victimised by these celebrities – even and especially if they are black themselves, and particularly if they are female and black – which only serve to emphasize how toxic this belief actually is.
Black media has at times participated in the propogation of this theory in various forms, and it’s all the more interesting considering that again, celebrities regardless of race will receive people seeking to defend them, and also the posture that they are distinct enough from “white” media purely because of the audiences it caters to, even though there is no difference in the management of consent it imposes on its audience. This episode of The Boondocks for what it’s worth touched on this dynamic, though it notably did not challenge the more problematic elements of it.
Perceptions of the R. Kelly sexual abuse case in the 2000s
Cultural osmosis allows for the prevailing narrative that The Boondocks exposed the vacuity of American celebrity culture – particularly African-Americans responding to R. Kelly’s sexual abuse allegations in the early 2000s. The question is: to what degree is that true? In order to answer that question we have to look at the specific allegations that The Boondocks episode is referencing.
In 2002, a tape was sent anonymously to the Chicago Sun Times of a man alleged to be R. Kelly engaging in sexual acts on a minor, believed to be a 14-year-old girl, said acts included urinating on her. The tape was sent to the police, but it wasn’t long until bootleg versions of the tape were uploaded on the internet. Kelly by then had faced several separate sexual abuse allegations since the beginning of his career, including allegations of an annulled marriage with a then 15-year old Aaliyah. He was arrested and charged with 21 counts of making child sexual abuse videos involving various sexual acts on a minor. Kelly posted bail of around $750,000, and gave an interview to MTV maintaining his innocence – saying that it wasn’t him in the video. There were of course those R. Kelly fans, ever unable to reconcile their appreciation of his music with the possibility that they may be supporting someone capable of such heinous crimes, and so they loyally supported R. Kelly and dismissed the allegations – believing they were motivated by revenge, or looking for money. The fact that neither the alleged victim, nor her guardian have publicly revealed their identities – something that were obvious logical barriers to such claims, did not stymie the fervency of such assertions or their propagation in the R. Kelly fanbase.
Beyond that, the response brought another set of response that were pretty much as gross as the rape apologetics seen so far – an acknowledgement of the possibility that R. Kelly probably did it, but the lurid aspect to the allegations warranted a sort of levity from the entire affair: from his incredulous assertion that the man in the video wasn’t him: dubbed the “Shaggy defense” – to the bizarre sexual fetish he apparently engaged in. Comedians such as Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle got mileage of allegations, the latter created a parody R. Kelly music video titled “Piss on You”. The Boondocks was actually the johnny-come-lately to the spectacle that the case created as its R. Kelly episode aired in late 2005, but all of these jokes were culpable in undermining the seriousness of R. Kelly allegedly engaging in statuatory rape – and presented a rape apologetics of its own. The Boondocks was particularly bad in this regard, and went further than most in its presentation of the case. All the time, a young woman – with no name, a face only known through a pixelated prism, and no means of protesting against this horrid spectacle had to endure the whole thing until the trial was over. All of which is putting aside that a literally countless number of people downloaded and watched the sex tape she was filmed in – act of violation – to see if was really was R. Kelly in the clip. This is the climate that The Boondocks was in, and rather than bring anything to light as many of its fans claim, it clouded people’s judgement and shrouded perceptions of the depth of Kelly’s depravity for cheap laughs.
“The Trial of R. Kelly” tries to have its cake and eat it by mocking R. Kelly supporters as a mostly thoughtless, and uncouth mob that is aggressively anti-intellectual (it’s fascinating to observe that the R. Kelly counter-protestors, which included Cornel West, are all men), yet presents Riley – although subject to African-American pop culture, effortlessly out-witting active prosecutor Tom Dubois by basically blaming the victim, and Tom offering no rebuttal to any of his points (Huey rubs it in by exclaiming “he got beat by an eight-year old”), even has the alleged victim – portrayed in a girl’s dress, pigtail and her face digitally blurred out almost giddy in her acceptance in R. Kelly’s acts – implicitly furthering the victim-blaming. She was even portrayed as dancing to R. Kelly’s music after his acquittal. A fictional girl nevertheless based on a real person, who I must again reiterate, was portrayed as anything that was deemed funny by comedians, taking advantage of the anonymity she maintained and therefore had no means to object to said portrayal.
And what of Huey’s speech? Let’s have a look at it in full and put it in the context its taking place:
“What the hell is wrong with y’all!? Every n**** that gets arrested is not Nelson Mandela! Yes, the government conspires to put a lot of innocent black men in jail on fallacious charges, but R. Kelly is not one of those men. We all know the n**** can sing. But what happened to standards? What happened to bare minimums? You a fan of R. Kelly? You wanna help R. Kelly? Then get some counselling for R. Kelly! Take away his camcorder. Introduce him to older women. But don’t pretend like he’s a hero! And stop with the god-damn dancing everybody! Act like you have some god-damn sense! Damn, I’m through playing around here!”
Huey Freeman
Throughout the episode, Huey – the socially conscious child, is made a foil for the “ignorant” R. Kelly supporters. What this does it presents Huey, an apparently active “black revolutionary” as less empathetic for his people, than even his grandfather – a former civil rights campaigner, who got into an argument with a literal self-hating black man espousing white supremacy. But that’s not the problem with the speech. The problem lies in the respectability politics it espouses and underpins the series throughout.
Huey’s speech hits a numbers of points: (1) just because black men are oppressed doesn’t mean that there should be no accountability among them. (2) If R. Kelly means so much to his support base, they should work to rehabilitate him. (3) R. Kelly’s talent doesn’t make him heroic. The first and last are fundamentally correct. The second, however, presents Kelly’s actions as part of some strange sexual fetish that with effort, he can overcome – rather than the predatory, exploitative pattern of behaviour that it actually was which he used his power and influence to keep under wraps. And yeah, it erases focus on the victim, who is in the background. In fact, she’s dancing with the R. Kelly crowd to his music. That anyone – let alone the scores of headlines and online commentary interpet this as progressive – let alone incisive in its foresight, is quite depressing.
Later R. Kelly developments in the real world
In 2008, R. Kelly was acquitted of the charges against him relating to the 2002 video. Among the factors that determined the case’s outcome was that R. Kelly’s defence lawyers argued that the girl was a “professional prostitute”, and that the girl in the video wasn’t her, nor was the man R. Kelly. The alleged victim – then 23-years old refused to testify against R. Kelly, giving the prosecution little to work with. The jury, composed of eight men, and four women – chose on acquitting because the alleged victim’s testimony was absent. One of the jurors said, “We all felt the grayness of the case”.
Subsequent revelations in light of the #MuteRKelly campaign, and the Lifetime documentary series Surviving R. Kelly, which aired in 2019 brought forth revelations around R. Kelly’s patterns of abuse of underage girls drawing back to even before his superstardom. One of the revelations adjacent was that during R. Kelly’s 2002 case, the alleged victim and her father were subject to intimidation by people associated with R. Kelly, and that they received gifts to persuade her and her mother against testifying. After the documentary brought a fresh series of allegations against the singer, she felt confident enough to cooperate with federal investigators.
Following the Surviving R. Kelly documentary release, on February 2019, R. Kelly was charged with ten counts of aggravated sexual abuse. On July of the same year, he was given eighteen charges, including child sexual exploitation, production of child pornography, kidnapping, racketeering, and obstruction of justice. He was subsquently given five charges which included soliciting a minor. In August 2021, R. Kelly was convicted on nine counts of child sex exploitation, racketeering, kidnapping, bribery, and sex trafficking. He is to receive his sentence on May 4, 2022. He is likely to receive life in prison. Following the verdict, women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred said that R. Kelly was the worst sexual predator she had ever pursued in her 47-year history of practicing law.
During the time of R. Kelly’s most recent court trials, journalists went out of their way to interview Aaron McGruder on his thoughts of the whole thing – no doubt because when a clip of Huey Freeman’s speech in the courtoom during R. Kelly’s trial went viral, to ask about how he was so prescient, and his thoughts about the very real support base assembled around R. Kelly. If you’re wondering why the piece linked is so lazy and unthorough, it might speak to the state of modern journalism in the era of social media – or towards a more specific reason is that the author and McGruder are friends.
It’s not that prescient. Aaron McGruder is not a psychic. R. Kelly’s first trial was a topic of discussion during 2004-2005. The only things that it got right were: 1) That there would be a court case around R. Kelly. 2) R. Kelly is very likely a child molester. 3) R. Kelly’s supporters would feel very strongly about the case. And possibly a fourth in that R. Kelly would get acquitted in that trial (though convicted in another one). What’s psychic about that? It was part of the media commentary at the time of the episode’s airing, and as in this episode, the circumstances of what exactly R. Kelly was accused of weren’t taken that seriously. Perhaps if journalists were to ask Aaron McGruder as to why he felt the need to portray one of R. Kelly’s alleged victims as enjoying it and happily dancing to his music, and black people – not just R. Kelly supporters – but going by Huey Freeman’s monologue, black people, in such a disparaging manner, we would have a different tale, and something worth reading. Guess we’ll never know.
By now it should be obvious, especially for those who watched that R. Kelly documentary, that the reason why fanbases of famous people continue to support them no matter what crimes they may have committed or how much evidence is built confirming their reprehensible behaviour, is because they are drawn to the public persona that they’ve cultivated. A persona sometimes maintained by public displays of philanthropy; genial interpersonal exchanges with fans; a self-reinforcing network of agents from lawyers, to managers, to personal staff protecting him with whatever means at their disposal – whether it was money, gifts, or even threats. But even more fundamentally than that – no-one wants to know that the person that they like, for whatever reason, is bad. Because that might say something about them. R. Kelly supporters even during the cases advise those who are undecided or uninformed about R. Kelly to not take what is said from the media at face value, and to be skeptical of the motivations behind his accusers, a stance that becomes untenable given the corroborating tales of the young women, former spouses, and former staff detailing his acts in horrifying detail. Their beliefs are conspiratorial, but they have to be if there supporting a guy who’s had claims going back to the early nineties.
As for the rest of his former fans, myself included, we have to come to terms that a man whose music resonanted with us, used the power and acclaim he gained from his talent to manipulate and abuse young black girls – we ignored the context of a culture where black girls are sexualised or perceived as promiscuous, and blame them for what is done when we ask “how come he wasn’t caught earlier?” And when faced with the question what it says about us, we either retroactively deflect that he wasn’t all that great, or pretend we always suspected, or as with the R. Kelly fans, indefintely defer these serious questions for another day. The exposure of R. Kelly was a cumulative effort which needed heavy cultural shifts as how we respond to sexual allegations from powerful figures – shifts that are clearly very incomplete in terms of having honest conversations about sexual assault.
But as it is, the basis of this article, we must ask what has The Boondocks done in bringing us to this point, and we must respond, “next to nothing”. In a lot of ways it actually had made things worse, and the real ridiculousness of it is, it is overwhemingly given credit for this by people who don’t bother to properly look at the work they’re telling everyone ‘was ahead of its time’ or whatever, but if you point out any of the issues highlighted here, the conversation then comes back to it being ‘just a comedy’ or ‘just satire’, when the point of satire is that it’s supposed to make to think about powerful figures and the structures that reinforce their power, and denying any of its culpability in particparting and encouraging a hostile cultural climate. In fandoms, be it of The Boondocks, R. Kelly, or whoever; it’s often a case that people see what they want to see, and don’t bother with the grimy details. I loved The Boondocks as a teen and young man, and would still enjoy several of its episodes, but this one – aged very poorly in light of the R. Kelly revelations, and it’s time that fans of the series admit that. I’m not calling for it to be banned or anything, if anything I would like people to see anything more than a 45-second Huey Freeman tirade to see the whole 22-minute capsule on how people in the 2000s responded to sexual abuse allegations and how that compares to today. But judging from the amount of digital ink given to singing how groundbreaking this was, it’s clear there is a very long way to go.
References
A great article on the cultural phenomeon of R. Kelly allegations: Columbia Journal Studies Review – How the media helped R. Kelly.
See also:
- The Boondocks
- Where did “The Boondocks” go wrong?
- Misogynoir
- Rape culture
- Blaming the victim
- “It’s just satire, bro!”
Because It Doesn't Affect You 