The man sitting behind me on this 50-minute flight from L.A. to San Francisco is White, in his mid-50s with salt-and-pepper hair, gold-rimmed glasses, and wearing the standard business casual uniform: khakis and a blue blazer. I know because I cocked my head back and looked.  He also has a radio-quality voice: the kind that is commanding, yet warm.  I know because he’s been on his phone talking to someone nonstop about getting his wife and son admitted into some event, without standing in line because they are “icons” (whatever that means).  He talked when the airplane doors were shut, when the flight attendant announced that we needed to turn-off electronics, when we taxied out to the runway, as we waited for 3 planes ahead of us to take-off, and until we started ascending into the sky (in an apparent stroke of luck, his “business” concluded about the same time he was going to lose connectivity).

I rolled my eyes as he listed what he wanted; and then asserted his status to get them. I had to stifle my urge to grab my computer, turn it on, and start bitching to you about his unchecked, privileged behavior.  I waited because that’s what we Black folks usually do: we follow the rules.  We have been spanked, scolded with fingers in our faces, and taught by painful experiences that we cannot do or get away with the same things White people can—particularly White males. I’ve witnessed and read about Black passengers getting reprimanded, harassed and even escorted off of planes for far less than talking on the phone after the doors have closed.

Correspondingly, I have preached, screamed, and cried to my two teenage sons that “they bet not think they can get away with what their little White friends can” just as my mom did with me when I was growing up.  I’ve told them frequently, “even if your friends get caught doing drugs, they are going to rehab, but you are going to jail;” and then I back it up with every news story and statistic available.  Am I trying to scare them?  Absofuckinglutely.  Scaring them may save their lives.  Do I resent that it must be this way?  Yes, to my very core.  And does it piss me off?  All the damn time.

So I identify with the many people who, in response to R. Kelly’s downfall, have expressed the sentiment: “but what about everybody else who has done the same thing?”  I understand that the R. Kelly case seems like another instance when White men are able to get away with the same crime for which a Black man is publicly lynched.  It is true that we have watched Bill Cosby and R. Kelly be tried and hung for violating young girls and women – while White men such as Elvis Presley, Roman Polanski, Harry Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Les Moonves, Steven Segal, Woody Allen, Matt Lauer, Jerry Lee Lewis and others seem to escape any real punishment.

However, this isn’t a situation like the airplane where the White man was taking on his phone after the door was shut, when there is no doubt that I would have been chastised for the same action.  The R. Kelly situation isn’t the same as getting stopped by the police for sitting in Starbucks or being followed in a store while a White middle class woman shoplifts.  R. Kelly, according to an overwhelming, and damning amount of evidence, raped, abused, essentially kidnapped, assaulted, peed on, chained up, starved, put into sexual slavery dozens and dozens of Black teenage girls (as young as 13 years old).

That is enough.

And that should be enough.

Those little girls, who are now damaged women are enough.

Enough!  While racism and unequal treatment are alive and well in America, we can’t allow that disparity to make us blind to the wrongdoings of one of our own, or to cause us to fail our people, and especially our children.  If we do, we allow ourselves to be victimized twice.  Once through the disparity and mistreatment of us generally, but again by standing blindly and passively by to the victimization of others.  We allow our distrust of White people to overshadow our love for each other.  And the love for each other, our vigilant protection of each other and of our children must come first, even when that means we must accept the decline of one of our heroes.

Enough is enough.