Reporter who broke R. Kelly sex abuse allegations: “Nobody matters less to our society than young black women”

The Village Voice’s interview with Jim DeRogatis, the pop music critic and former Chicago Sun-Times reporter who broke the R. Kelly sex tape story with the allegations of child sex abuse against the singer, is this week’s must-read piece for everyone on the Internet. In an intimate Q&A, music critic Jessica Hopper asks DeRogatis the tough questions that everyone familiar with the allegations has been wondering: How does Kelly still have a successful music career?

 DeRogatis’ response is blunt and troubling and worth reading in full. Throughout his career, DeRogatis interviewed two dozen women, sifted through “hundreds of pages of lawsuits” with nauseating details of abuse and intimidation tactics used against them, and felt the emotional rawness of women whose lives have been ruined. “The saddest fact I’ve learned is: nobody matters less to our society than young black women,” he said. “Nobody. They have any complaint about the way they are treated: they are ‘bitches, hos, and gold diggers,’ plain and simple. Kelly never misbehaved with a single white girl who sued him or that we know of. Mark Anthony Neal, the African-American scholar, makes this point: one white girl in Winnetka and the story would have been different.”
While at the Chicago Sun-Times in 2000, after receiving an anonymous tip of an open lawsuit against Kelly, DeRogatis found the first of many “stomach churning” accounts of rape:
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