Somebody Come Get Talib
If you receive our newsletters, then you know I touched on this not too long ago. I’m talking about it again because this deranged man has yet to cease with his harassment of a black woman and we, the people, are fed up. I’m going to try to give a brief recap and then tell you where it stands currently. As I type this, Talib has taken his harassment to several social media platforms. What’s scary about this ongoing verbal abuse is that it’s putting a black woman directly in harms way via social media. We talk all the time on this platform how black women feel unprotected and this is just another example.
Last month, a student activist by the name of Maya Moody tweeted this in response to a tweet with a list of Black male rappers married to Black women. While Talib’s name is mentioned, she didn’t address him directly. A normal person would have just kept scrolling. Not in Talib’s case. This response was the spark that launched a tirade of tweets that lasted 12 hours straight. It got so bad that Talib’s wife was called out for his behavior, which led to the exposure of an alleged mistress. Yeah, it got that bad. The more people kept telling Talib to drop it, the more enraged he became, which led to two straight weeks of verbal harassment. While black women banded together to report his Twitter account, there was absolute silence from his male counterparts. Nothing. Not even from the other celebrities who were mentioned in the tweet. Both Chance and Ice Cube could have stepped in, considering how much they use their twitter fingers, but alas, black women were on their own per usual.
It took weeks before Twitter suspended Talib’s account. WEEKS. One would think that it would be enough to shut him up, but no. He decided to take his abuse to other platforms. In addition to harassing her on Twitter, Talib proceeded to find her Instagram and start his antics there. He hopped on Live in an attempt to assassinate her character. He dug up old tweets in order to label her as a racist and even posted her Gofundme page in attempts to doxx her. Insane right? If you thought reporting abuse on Twitter was hard, it’s ten times worse on Instagram. Considering the type of content that gets posted on Instagram everyday, a has-been-rapper harrassing a black woman is the least of their concerns. Maya is now at the point where she fears for her safety and is trying to raise money to retain legal services because Talib is still harassing her. It’s demented and the silence from black men is louder than any online rant.
Numerous blogs and websites have written articles about Talib’s antics, but the majority of them have framed it as a back-and-forth when it’s clear that this is a one sided gripe session. Maya has posted several screenshots of interview questions that she has been sent and most of them are in support of Talib’s position. What really stood out to me is how people are saying that it was simply her tweet that set him off and she should consider apologizing. Did I miss something? The only thing I see is man with no emotional intelligence spiraling because he was triggered by a tweet that wasn’t directed towards him.
Maybe it was the comment about light skinned wives that bothered Talib. I don’t follow his career closely, but I think he considers himself a woke rapper who cares about the plight of the African American community and the idea of participating in colorism could ruin his image. I don’t know and I’m not here to dissect his reasoning. If he is who he says he is then he would know that attacking and harassing black woman on the internet is unacceptable. You can’t claim to be for your community and participate in the very abuse that we speak out against. That’s not how this works.
Situations like this have to stop and black men need to do better at speaking up for us. If one of his colleagues immediately told him to knock it off and mind his business, this could have been nipped in the bud weeks ago. It’s unnecessary, and I’m sure that Talib has a lot more to worry about than a wayward tweet that didn’t address him directly. I say all this to say someone needs to disconnect Talib’s internet, snatch him up on the street or simply tell him to STFU. The last thing we need right now is another black man threatening the safety of a black woman when our lives are already on the line.
