I was browsing the web and I came across a documentary called Black Woman Walking. The film interviews young women about the rude and aggressive behavior that they encounter from black males.

As I was watching the film, I happened to cringe a bit because it touched a nerve. There was nothing wrong with the documentary, and I wasn’t offended, it’s just that it brought back memories of being a teenager and the disrespect that I sometimes had to put up with.

One incident in particular I will never forget. I was in a store minding my own business and a guy approached me asking for my name and number. I politely said “no thank you” and he went off on a screaming tangent. I was shocked, but at the time I thought it was funny. I couldn’t believe someone could get so upset over rejected advances.

As I thought about my own experiences and read the comments that people were leaving on the video and on message boards, I knew I had to interview the person behind this film.

So here’s an interview with Tracey Rose. I hope it opens your eyes as much as it opened mine.

Can you tell me a little about yourself?

I’m a writer/media-maker living in New York. I studied film at Howard University and have worked in media for the past ten years.

What’s the history being creating this documentary and what did you hope to accomplish?

It was partly inspired by my personal experiences with street harassment, but more so from a serious interest in black women’s history and the politics surrounding black women’s bodies.

Have you personally experienced a man grabbing you in public? If so how did you respond?

Not grabbing per se, touching yes, but I don’t see those incident(s) disconnected from the times I was called out of my name on a public street or the many times men assumed I was soliciting because I was simply standing at a bus stop. My response in each instance varied. Sometimes, I was overcome with shock and did nothing. Other times, I was afraid and did nothing. And then there were times, I cursed at men and flipped them off. It’s completely different in each moment but any response is often tempered by how safe the situation feels at the time.

Some people would look at this and say that this issue is not unique to black women so why was that your only focus. How would you respond to that?

I chose to focus on black women because we have a different history in relation to sexual violence and respectability than other women in this country. To conflate them all as one singular experience is unfair and untrue. Native American women and Latina women have a different relationship to these issues based on the complexity of their histories, as do white women or Asian women.

Black women’s bodies have a different relationship to public space and are viewed differently. The social and historical narrative that surrounds us has everything to do with how we’re perceived and how available are bodies thought to be when they appear in a public space.

A woman on your video said that she didn’t see white men treating white women that way. Some would say that you are trying to paint black men in a bad light and that you could have made it more balanced, what is your response to that?

I understand that some people may feel that way. To be honest, I never set out to make a film about intra-racial street harassment.

The audience for this film is really specific and it operates in a real specific context.

It goes without saying that the film isn’t a short hand that aims to speak for all. I assume most audiences are leery of anything that even claims to do that. This is several black women speaking about a shared experience within their community. So, in that, I wonder about this need for balance. That, in a space where we’re speaking amongst ourselves, to each other, why would I need to be so worried about not criminalizing black men, unless on some level, we believe that black men are criminals.

The real question to me is why in our own narratives and dialogues with each other, where our default is the basic humanity and breadth of black people, would I need to do the same disclaiming and balancing act that I would do for a film with a “broader” audience?

We know that we live in a culture where women are seen as sex objects but what can we as women do about it? Are we just helpless victims who need to learn how to ignore crass behavior?

No, I don’t believe we’re helpless victims or anything. I think the more we discuss this amongst ourselves and with men in our communities, the less we normalize this behavior. That’s part of the issue, how seemingly “normal” it all is. It’s a socially tolerable form of violence.

I’ve had women come up to me crying after a screening, because they remember how psychologically damaged they felt in their teen years and how this affected their view of the men in their communities thereafter. For something so “seemingly small,” this can have major repercussions on our most basic interactions.

Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

I was raised by a father who, as a kid, I would always write off as overprotective and paranoid because of his preoccupation with sexual violation, but I later realized that he understood that a black female body was looked at as prey in the world.

There are few instances in my life that solidified that view for me more than the harassment I encountered on city streets. You finally understand that on a basic level, you are just a body to some people, not a student, a daughter, a friend, or a wife, but merely a body with breasts and an opening between her legs. And to see that is really horrifying, but then you remember that we live in a country, where systemic rape of black women was justified, that in a court of a law, it was considered impossible to rape a black woman, her violation legally could not be considered rape. The undercurrent of that consciousness doesn’t go away just cause you get the right to vote. It lives in our soil. It lives in our language.

Many more people are willing to talk about street harassment than are willing to talk about domestic violence, rape, or the sex trafficking of minors. But isn’t the undercurrent underneath those things the same consciousness that creates them all–the idea that women, especially women of color, are fundamentally prey?

Thank you so much for your time.