By Within the week of the anniversary of Emmett Till’s death, Nikki Yovino, a white woman, sat in a Long Island courtroom rolling her eyes after admitting to falsely accusing two Black football players of rape.
In an institution built by and for white people, there are few things more powerful than a white woman’s tears. At the sight of a single glimmering drop from the second-in-line on the privilege train’s eye, white men spring into action.
This need to “protect their women” is rooted in misogyny, racism, Eurocentrism, you name it; white women have been utilizing this dangerous tool since the beginning. Turning to falsely accusing men of color in both a play to assert their dominance over those seemingly “below” them on the social hierarchy and appealing to the territorial “need” to protect that has been built into their counterparts.
In February last year, Yovino, 19, told police that she was raped by two Black men that were on the Sacred Heart University football team. She claimed that while at an off-campus party, the two men pulled her into a bathroom and took turns raping her.
Yovino walked out of the proceedings having avoided a serious felony charge, and the two men have lost their academic and athletic futures. Racism is so casually embedded into the very fabric of our institutions and society that a woman felt like two other lives were so completely disposable in the pursuit of what she wanted.
The men denied the accusations, but only after a lengthy investigation, losing their scholarships and leaving Sacred Heart University did Yovino admit to making the story up. Her reason? She was desperate for the attention of another man, and thought that this would make him sympathetic to her cause and want to date her.
Yovino walked out of the proceedings having avoided a serious felony charge, and the two men have lost their academic and athletic futures.
Racism is so casually embedded into the very fabric of our institutions and society that a woman felt like two other lives were so completely disposable in the pursuit of what she wanted. There are obviously a multitude of things disgustingly wrong with this, but perhaps what makes it worse is the fact that this white woman used these Black men knowing that the consequences for them would be different.
In an attempt to reclaim power and privilege, so often taken away from them by white men by way of the patriarchy, white women use people of color to do their bidding. They will claw their way as close to the top as possible, leaving a slew of people of color in their wake.
Throughout the proceedings, Yovino appeared to be rolling her eyes, which at this point, shouldn’t be shocking.