During a sit-down on “The View” in celebration of Black History Month, “Power” creator Courtney Kemp and star Naturi Naughton weighed in on the “Me Too” movement.
As Black women in the industry, forms of mistreatment are not new. And for Kemp, she’s experienced a stunning blowback when she refused to hug a male higher up.
“The snide remarks the hands put on you, the being forced to hug somebody,” she begins. “I was working with somebody and he came in for a hug and I didn’t want to hug him. I didn’t want to have physical contact with this person. I said, ‘You know what, actually, I’m cool. It’s good to see you.’ … and he goes, ‘Bitch.’
“And that was because I wouldn’t allow him to get into my physical space. It goes into the next piece, which is that he was [at a] higher level than I was on that show so what does that mean for my future? What are the implications that come from that?”
Naughton added that she was glad the movement has led women to start “unapologetically telling their truths.”
“I was in a girl group [3LW] in the record business at 15 of course I’ve … let’s say producers for example,” she continues. “When you’re a teenager and you’re in this business and you just want to make it sometimes you don’t know what the boundaries are. So you’re like, ‘Well, maybe it’s OK, the way I’m being treated — not even just from men, just in general — being objectified or mistreated or not being paid. Essentially as a woman, you feel like, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t complain or I should play my position just to get ahead and I think we’re tired of that and now the time has come to say, ‘No more.'”
Naughton and Camp also agreed that the Me Too movement hasn’t fairly represented Black women.
“It’s so much worse for us, it really is,” Camp says. “It’s so much worse and I think on some level that there is … it’s almost like, ‘Is that the thing I want to talk about today? Is that the thing? Is that the problem I have?'”
