Tina Lawson-Knowles, the mother of global megastar Beyonce Knowles-Carter, is on the receiving end of backlash over her participation in a four-part docuseries about black men.
Petition launched to cancel Tina Lawson-Knowles docuseries
Profiled: The Black Man is documentary that premiered on Discovery+ on Saturday 12 February 2022. The Oprah Winfrey Network-produced series highlights the adversities faced by black men in the United States, and shines the spotlight on black-owned businesses.
The first episode explores the misconception about black men being dangerous, and ties this in with the story of Leon Ford, a man who, in November 2012, was shot by Pittsburgh police during a traffic stop.
The episode also highlights The Black Bread Co., a sliced-bread business founded by Charles Alexander, Mark Edmond and Jamel Lewis at the height of unrest following the unjust death of George Floyd.
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While the aim of the docuseries, executive produced by Lawson-Knowles, seeks to disarm racial stereotypes placed against black men, a feminist only known by her username on Change.org, Lexus Exodus, has launched a petition, calling for Discovery to remove the title from its catalogue.
“As a Black woman who is also a classically trained journalist (who understands minority media depictions very well), this is extremely problematic as the actual research, statistics and data paint a drastically different picture. According to the FBI, at least four Black women and girls were murdered per day in the United States in 2020 alone.
“We’ve seen a stark increase in these numbers recently, and according to Black women advocacy organization “Black Femicide — America” a Black woman is killed in the US once every 6 hours. According to the US Department of Justice, Black women are much more likely to be sexually assaulted and four times more likely than white women to be murdered by a significant other. More disturbingly, 92% of these killings were intra-racial, which means the overwhelming majority of these murders were committed by a Black man against a Black woman,” the user wrote.
The petition has since garnered close to 4 000 signatures out of its goal of 5 000. Lawson-Knowles and Discovery have not issued a response to the backlash.
Tina Knowles does not speak for BW. & this naker-documentary won’t change anything, just like their constant begging WM for centuries has changed nothing for their precious “kAnGs”.
— Platform for #Divested #BW (@DivestHub) February 18, 2022
Tina Knowles should be ashamed of herself black women are not safe from black men they are dying every 5 and a half hours and sometimes the kids die.This really infuriates me.
— Sher (@Sher529) February 15, 2022
Tina Knowles Won’t convince me to care about how Black men are treated in America, their some of the biggest
— Bougie Black Cousin (@BougieCousin) February 18, 2022
white supremacist of all time they trash their women , their community and Create a dangerous environment for Black people to live in.
