YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT THIS: What About All the Other R. Kellys? I Knew Many Growing Up. “I also saw other things, like the tall, muscular, light-skinned brother who looked like LL Cool J. It was said he could get any woman he wanted, but chose kids. He got my brother, who then did the only thing he could to protect me: He made sure I was never alone around Lafayette. He never told me why until I was older. . . . There always seemed to be an ‘uncle’ or ‘mother’s old friend from high school,’ who was diving into little girls’ beds. These R. Kellys were the open-secret. The closed-secret was how many boys were being taken advantage of.”

Plus: “Our fraught relationship with America has resulted in the tension that so many of us felt over R. Kelly. How could we champion sending another Black man to prison when the state has imprisoned so many unjustly? And yet, his victims were also Black. They were ours. Don’t they deserve justice? Don’t all the boys and girls whose abusers continue to roam free?”