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Why Hurricane Ida has been so devastating to the Gulf Coast

<a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/8/28/22645870/hurricane-ida-gulf-coast-storm">Hurricane Ida</a> made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday, the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, as an enormous <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/8/29/22647117/hurricane-ida-categories-explained">Category 4</a> storm with sustained winds of 150 miles per hour and gusts <a href="https://twitter.com/GregPostel/status/1432340552498962435?s=20">up to 172 mph</a>. The storm tore roofs off buildings, flooded homes, and left the entire city of <a href="https://www.accuweather.com/en/hurricane/live-news/live-ida-turns-deadly-blacks-out-new-orleans-and-shuts-down-911-calls/1006534">New Orleans in the dark</a>.
Ida will likely be one of the worst extreme weather events of 2021, a year already swelling with heat waves, wildfires, droughts, and storms. “Hurricane Ida is one of the strongest storms to ever hit Louisiana,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a statement on Sunday.
The storm is still churning and turning east through Mississippi. Though Ida has been downgraded to a tropical storm, more devastation is likely in store. The nation will learn more about local impacts as communities regain access to electricity and spotty communications. Even after the winds die down, the towering storm surge will likely linger for days and impede rescue and recovery efforts. So will the coronavirus pandemic: Less than half of Louisiana’s population is vaccinated, and 2,600 patients were hospitalized for Covid-19 as Ida made landfall.
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<figcaption>A section of a building’s roof is blown off during rain and winds in New Orleans’s French Quarter on August 29.</figcaption>
<cite>Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images</cite></figure>
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<figcaption>Vehicles are damaged after the front of a building collapsed in New Orleans.</figcaption>
<cite>Scott Olson/Getty Images</cite></figure>
The size and uncanny timing of Hurricane Ida makes it impossible to avoid comparisons to Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 storm that <a href="https://ldh.la.gov/assets/oph/Center-PHCH/Center-CH/stepi/specialstudies/2014PopwellRatard_KatrinaDeath_PostedOnline.pdf">killed at least 1,170 people</a> and tied 2017’s Hurricane Harvey as the costliest disaster in US history. While levees appear to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/hurricane-ida-did-new-orleanss-flood-system-work-11630277143">have protected</a> much of the state from Katrina-level flooding so far, some similarities are likely to emerge: Structural inequities and vulnerabilities remain, and communities of color are still at high risk from hurricanes like this.
But much of Katrina’s toll in human suffering and devastation became visible in the days and weeks after the storm, in part due to a botched relief effort. It will take time to figure out whether Louisiana, the city of New Orleans, and the US as a whole learned the lessons of Katrina in advance of Ida.
“People think of a few common themes when they think about hurricanes in New Orleans,” including levees and the legacy of Hurricane Katrina, Lamar Gardere, executive director of the Louisiana nonprofit the Data Center, wrote to Vox on Sunday, shortly after evacuating the city. “But every hurricane boils down to a story about infrastructure, inequity, and climate change/coastal land loss.”
“These are the same stories that affect much of our country, but they come into acute focus with immediate and dramatic effect during these events,” Gardere added.
Cities along the Gulf Coast have spent billions over the past decade and a half building up their defenses — levees, sea wall, flood control mechanisms. But populations have grown, the oceans have risen, and the planet has warmed. The threat of extreme weather is growing, and it’s becoming harder to adapt.
The Gulf Coast is especially vulnerable to tropical storms
Millions of people live in the US Gulf Coast, which is one of the country’s fastest-growing regions and stretches across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Between 2000 and 2016, the population in the region <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/coastal-county-population-rises.html">grew by 25.4 percent</a>, compared to 14.8 percent across the US as a whole.
That in turn has fueled a construction boom of homes, businesses, infrastructure, and industrial facilities, particularly for the oil and gas sector. Ida made landfall near Port Fourchon, an oil and gas hub that experienced some of the storm’s most extreme winds and storm surges. Much of the new construction is in low-lying areas prone to coastal inundation, with some <a href="https://www.nola.com/news/environment/article_9e74b44c-6aad-51b0-adcb-af07a317c966.html">places lying below sea level</a>.
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<figcaption>A resident is rescued by a first responder in LaPlace, Louisiana, on August 30.</figcaption>
<cite>Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images</cite></figure>
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Parts of the <a href="https://www.nola.com/news/environment/article_9e74b44c-6aad-51b0-adcb-af07a317c966.html">Gulf Coast are sinking</a> as the soft ground settles beneath heavy construction and changes in land use, a phenomenon known as subsidence. The coastline itself, which can serve as a barrier against storms, is <a href="https://www.katc.com/news/fading-away-louisianas-battle-against-coastal-erosion">wearing away</a> as rising seas erode the shore. Changes to waterways like the Mississippi River have also diminished vital sources of sediments for replenishing the coast.
All this means that lots of people and property are in harm’s way when disasters occur. And Ida took an especially destructive course through major population centers.
The risks, however, are not distributed equally. Many lower-income communities and those populated by people of color have less protective infrastructure like levees and sea walls, leaving them vulnerable to storms and rising water. The people in these communities also often have the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-ida-stranded-3afc25cdcb7f5d8347d86f7cc69817e1">most difficulty getting out of the path of the storm</a> as they struggle to find adequate money and shelter to evacuate.
2021 already looks like a worse-than-usual hurricane season
In May, the NOAA forecasted that the US Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from late May until the end of November, had a 60 percent chance of being “<a href="https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-predicts-another-active-atlantic-hurricane-season">above normal.”</a> So far, that prediction has come to pass. “After a record-setting start, the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season does not show any signs of relenting as it enters the peak months ahead,” said Rick Spinrad, NOAA administrator, in an <a href="https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/atlantic-hurricane-season-shows-no-signs-of-slowing">August statement</a>.
This year’s season is below the record-breaking season last year, which was the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/11/10/21558470/theta-eta-hurricane-2020-tropical-storm-atlantic-record">busiest on record</a>. But there are several factors this year that are fueling a more active year for tropical cyclones.
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<aside><q>“Every hurricane boils down to a story about infrastructure, inequity, and climate change/coastal land loss”</q></aside>
</div>
Ordinarily, a key factor is sea surface temperature. Hurricanes need water to be at least 26 degrees Celsius, or 79 degrees Fahrenheit, and the warmer water gets, the more energy is available to form storms. Water temperatures in the Gulf <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-hurricane-ida/">spiked ahead of Hurricane Ida</a>, but sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic this year have generally been <a href="https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/ocean_briefing_gif/global_ocean_monitoring_current.pdf">near average levels</a>. Still, forecasters are anticipating a stronger <a href="https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/international/africa/africa_hazard.pdf">West African monsoon</a>, which helps <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6263948">birth hurricanes</a>.
Meteorologists are also expecting less vertical wind shear in the atmosphere, which are changes in wind speed and direction that can rip apart hurricanes before they form. Another factor that favors more active hurricane seasons: Since 1995, the Atlantic Ocean has been in the warm phase of a decades-long ebb and flow in ocean temperatures, known as the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation.
The climate is changing and making hurricanes more damaging
The planet is warming due to emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. That amplifies the raw ingredients of hurricanes and can worsen storms.
While researchers are still parsing the climate signals in Hurricane Ida, scientists have known for decades that climate change worsens hurricanes for several reasons. <a href="https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-sea-surface-temperature">Sea surface temperatures are rising</a>, which infuses storms with more energy and can increase their intensity.
“As the climate warms, we expect that the upper bound of how intense a hurricane can get ... goes up at a certain rate with warming and that’s been known for 33 years,” Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Vox last year.
Another way climate change makes hurricanes more destructive is by increasing their rainfall. Air soaks up about 7 percent more water for every degree Celsius the air warms, so warmer air means more moisture is available for precipitation. Extreme rainfall events are on the rise, and Ida drenched parts of Louisiana with as much as <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/hurricane-ida-louisiana-2021-08-30/">24 inches of rain</a>.
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<figcaption>A man helps a stranded motorist in floodwaters in Biloxi, Mississippi, on August 30.</figcaption>
<cite>Sean Rayford/Getty Images</cite></figure>
Rising sea levels due to the melting of <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html">ice caps and the thermal expansion of water</a> are leading to larger <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/8/27/21403161/hurricane-laura-storm-surge-flooding-unsurvivable">storm surges</a>, too. This coastal flooding, driven by a storm’s winds pushing water inland, is often the deadliest and most destructive element of hurricanes. Ida created a storm surge as high as <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/how-will-hurricane-ida-compare-hurricane-katrina-storm-makes-landfall-n1277919">16 feet</a>.
Climate change is also causing the rapid intensification of more hurricanes. NOAA defines <a href="https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutgloss.shtml">rapid intensification</a> as a gain of 35 mph or more in wind speed over 24 hours. <a href="https://www.axios.com/hurricane-ida-climate-change-role-fd22421c-389b-440a-9353-88ac85548d6b.html">Ida strengthened</a> from category 2 strength (with winds up to 110 miles per hour) to category 4 strength (with winds topping 150 mph) in less than a day. Hurricanes tend to rapidly intensify when they pass over a patch of water that is warm, deep, and calm. These changes in wind speed can make the difference between a building surviving a hurricane and being obliterated by it.
Experts have been warning for more than a year that a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/4/21/21222687/coronavirus-covid-19-hurricane-planning-preparedness-emergency-managers-disaster">hurricane striking during a pandemic</a> would pose unique challenges, and health officials are worried more difficulties may arise in the wake of Hurricane Ida.
“We’re having a situation where even when you’re stretched to the limit — to superimpose upon it what will likely be a historic weather environmental catastrophe — is going to do nothing but make things much, much worse,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/08/29/sotu-fauci-on-ida.cnn">CNN on Sunday</a>.
Hospitals are contending with power outages, and many are unable to relocate their patients because other <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/30/us/hurricane-ida-updates/in-baton-rouge-a-hospital-strained-by-the-pandemic-braces-for-storm-victims">medical facilities in the region are already full of Covid-19 patients</a>.
For evacuees in shelters, it’s proving hard to maintain social distance. The risk of further transmission is high, given relatively low vaccination rates across the Gulf Coast and the spread of the more-transmissible delta variant.
Hurricane Katrina took a devastating toll on communities of color, and advocates fear these communities will again suffer some of the worst impacts of Hurricane Ida.
Indigenous communities in the bayou have been hit by catastrophic flooding, said Donny Verdin, a member of the tribal council of the United Houma Nation. “We have people who stayed behind whose houses were flooding and roofs were blown off as they were in them,” Verdin, who evacuated to Texas on Saturday, told Vox on Monday.
The United Houma Nation is typically overlooked by federal relief, Verdin said, because it’s not a federally recognized tribe. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he said, his community relied on donations and nonprofit organizations instead of support from the federal government. “We’re just left to fend for ourselves,” he said. “The community usually pulls together and we build back. It’s what we’ve done forever.”
Storms and sea-level rise fueled by climate change <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/05/14/478040492/native-americans-relocation-from-louisiana-home-first-climate-change-refugees">have been pushing tribes further inland</a>, away from their traditional territories. The majority of Verdin’s community used to live right on the coast: “We are people of the water,” he said. After Katrina, three-quarters of them moved inland, Verdin told Vox.
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<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1630368805_4063_48937" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22815381,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LG5TirkvA1kNVp7uvIHjKtWhGLo=/0x0:3000x2000/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/X-SETmnw3yozX5_YQruMmyjw68E=/0x0:3000x2000/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5dP5UNFClkrLYrTyNDtkOpjfR9c=/0x0:3000x2000/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qRd1X-t52AFsDrr5CZZuHODiXhQ=/0x0:3000x2000/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LVqAEqfWNlWSNtJs0tBoyq2mwq0=/0x0:3000x2000/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RMcFc3p_vfFAaq0RyurOlvSH1mg=/0x0:3000x2000/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WOaHnJ22s-63o9FYn9LHFnEQgvo=/0x0:3000x2000/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/q9D8BSSPFgbYg4DVt_depnmA4KM=/0x0:3000x2000/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qD1ymXY8hWkIKRkjwwRaFxup0f8=/0x0:3000x2000/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 1920w" sizes="90vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="3000" sizes="90vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/utw5vIarbAv31brpvSQwQWPN-uc=/0x0:3000x2000/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lpTwTbVALxfkscAA1xJziPq0WfQ=/0x0:3000x2000/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BJeJmlpAoRbFufjhIYzF1rPIgrQ=/0x0:3000x2000/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9DMbuACnNB1zMUceNjdvSHYGQmY=/0x0:3000x2000/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YNMxJ10TlzZbqbutt0fE7dg6RdE=/0x0:3000x2000/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WDrkmAlJco9Siozsty4d3LY-Jos=/0x0:3000x2000/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PsSzUqEyKfs2SYorRkfu8cktRTs=/0x0:3000x2000/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9g9I0gQ8v1xFJmrORlWs5-rdzeA=/0x0:3000x2000/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/22DkpiuFY78W_YvnptAuKqOvj9g=/0x0:3000x2000/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/C1bshndcF10uHsroreY42ZZZgvM=/0x0:3000x2000/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815381/GettyImages_1234965344_copy.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Residents of Laplace, Louisiana, inspect damage to their homes on August 30.</figcaption>
<cite>Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images</cite></figure>
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1630368805_8589_48938" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22815348,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WXXj4-rltlIHCJqzxU6B9SDiRRk=/0x0:3000x2000/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CtzaNrFOoltDhx-WgIdx6pRZhBM=/0x0:3000x2000/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/b065HjtQR-hVZG0wjaXCbwn5tjo=/0x0:3000x2000/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Z7q2xPhAVVG7igM-GWa63BNqoyA=/0x0:3000x2000/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/biDIBNz4nfrlO8TLAGRWXV5puGY=/0x0:3000x2000/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/R4rO9EirVS9PPkYq1Uobemz7Wio=/0x0:3000x2000/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uUIBYNFy_sd7fl9EaG0rff_MlgA=/0x0:3000x2000/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rd_1GwV0aWh8yA1by-lSIhNYh2c=/0x0:3000x2000/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AZuy_3AJUCFDda-1yU0wYjNnhd4=/0x0:3000x2000/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 1920w" sizes="90vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="A rescuer in waist-deep water has a hand on a rubber raft holding several people being evacuated from their flooded neighborhood." data-upload-width="3000" sizes="90vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sk_9uPYsgUIrNzgi9X0glt-0A3s=/0x0:3000x2000/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SnR-De6WYk4q6p5NjQYSofOL0Hk=/0x0:3000x2000/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mFt3wErKVRxQKD_3KCmrNCEWcI4=/0x0:3000x2000/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1evOoMNKjaa_RR_5K8nxa2A4g18=/0x0:3000x2000/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iXE-EouMqg8mM36T7D2Z2xSk-pc=/0x0:3000x2000/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/89TGlMNsMlny3YRPft-DGRQTr8g=/0x0:3000x2000/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1AdTNBY1GTE0FJufY55kDS-KjlA=/0x0:3000x2000/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Y9eTI-gAtAAxLbc4MNn8taNDwXE=/0x0:3000x2000/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1BrZ0GMMQ6ByoCEERQPLqEClnwM=/0x0:3000x2000/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Ut3iY3nwyhlfLV_1I5RLQHfwkQw=/0x0:3000x2000/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22815348/GettyImages_1234964902.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>First responders rescue residents from floodwaters in LaPlace.</figcaption>
<cite>Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images</cite></figure>
</div>
“The community is not as close as it once was because people are more scattered,” he said. “The best-case scenario is that we are able to relocate our communities. The worst-case scenario is that they wash away.”
Relocating communities who have lived in coastal Louisiana for generations comes at a steep cost. “Our access to the natural resources and food security has been everything for our sovereignty,” said Monique Verdin (no direct relation to Donny Verdin), another member of the United Houma Nation who works with the community group Another Gulf is Possible. “When you take the people away from the bayou you’re literally taking them away from their ability to feed themselves.” Plus, at the end of the day, she told Vox, “you can’t run from climate change.”
It’s hard not to draw ties between Hurricane Ida and Hurricane Katrina, one of the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-ida-katrina-compare-louisiana-88dce72660d0c928f4815eff5a8bfd8f">most expensive storms in US history</a>. The storms landed on the same day of the year and in roughly the same spot. They had similar wind speeds. They even gained strength by passing over a similar patch of warm ocean water in the Gulf that fuels hurricanes, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-ida-katrina-compare-louisiana-88dce72660d0c928f4815eff5a8bfd8f">the AP reported</a>.
There are some important differences in the storms themselves — Ida caused a weaker storm surge but had stronger winds, for example. But even if all things were considered equal, Ida is likely to be far less devastating than the 2005 storm.
Katrina was destructive in part because of structural issues with the region’s system of levees — many of which failed — and a botched government response to the crisis, as Vox’s German Lopez <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/8/23/9191907/hurricane-katrina">previously reported</a>. Here’s how Lopez put it:
<blockquote>
The government response was so wildly incompetent that it allowed the worst of the catastrophe to continue and sometimes created entirely new, unnecessary problems. People will always have to deal with unavoidable natural disasters, but a poor government reaction and preparation can lead to many more deaths and untold costs.
</blockquote>
The US government also failed to evacuate tens of thousands of people who couldn’t afford to leave Louisiana before the storm hit, Lopez reported.
The levee system is much stronger today, after a $14.5 billion investment in storm protection authorized by Congress in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The Army Corps of Engineers has since constructed hundreds of miles of levees around New Orleans, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-orleans-levees-got-145-billion-upgrade-will-they-hold-2021-08-30/">Reuters reported</a>, some of which are <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/hurricane-ida-did-new-orleanss-flood-system-work-11630277143">30 feet tall</a>. They appear to be working, with only <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/aug/30/hurricane-ida-2021-live-update-louisiana-storm-hits-new-orleans-path-tracker-mississippi-river-latest-updates">a small number</a> of levee failures reported outside of the city. The governor <a href="https://www.wdsu.com/article/all-of-louisiana-s-levee-systems-performed-extremely-well-hurricane-ida-gov-edwards/37431994">said on Monday</a> that the state’s storm protection system performed “extremely well,” after <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-orleans-levees-got-145-billion-upgrade-will-they-hold-2021-08-30/">stating earlier</a> that they were “built for this moment.” (His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
The details of Hurricane Ida’s devastation will trickle out for days to come, as officials survey the damage and conduct search-and-rescue operations. “I fully expect [the] death count will go up considerably throughout the day,” the governor told MSNBC on Monday.
And if past hurricanes are any guide, the government’s ongoing response to the storm — including its long-term follow-through — will shape the region’s recovery and its resilience to future hurricanes.
There will be more storms, and in a warming world, they’ll get worse.
Daniel A. Gross contributed reporting to this article.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22648189/hurricane-ida-new-orleans-louisiana-flood-climate-change-covid">https://www.vox.com/22648189/hurricane-ida-new-orleans-louisiana-flood-climate-change-covid</a>

vox Why Hurricane Ida has been so devastating to the Gulf Coast

Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday, the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, as an enormous Category 4 storm with sustai...

Amber Hall Joins Vox as Deputy Editorial Director, Talk Podcasts

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Wlg77e3v-N2HjQeE30mZBXLujAM=/0x750:1851x1719/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22814712/image0__1_.jpeg" /></div>
Vox VP of audio Liz Kelly Nelson announced today that Amber Hall has joined the network as deputy editorial director, talk podcasts. In this new role, Hall will oversee and grow Vox’s strong portfolio of interview and roundtable audio content, which currently includes podcasts such as Vox Conversations, The Weeds, and Recode Media, across distribution platforms. She’ll work to refresh and strengthen programming, and develop and implement plans for continued audience growth. She starts today.
“Amber has built an amazing reputation with her work at The Takeaway and The Agenda. We’re looking forward to her turning her considerable talents to the evolution of Vox’s talk podcast slate,” said Liz Kelly Nelson.
Prior to joining Vox, Hall spent more than five years at WNYC working in a variety of roles on The Takeaway, most recently as the daily news show’s senior producer managing editorial planning and production. In 2018, she helped launch Politics with Amy Walter from The Takeaway and served as the show’s senior producer for its entire run (2018-2021). From 2015-2018, she was the planning editor focused on long term projects and the 2016 presidential election. She cut her teeth in audio production at SiriusXM, where she was the executive producer and co-creator of the progressive morning show The Agenda. Before turning to audio storytelling, she was part of the editorial team for In The Life, an LGBTQ newsmagazine show on public television. She was awarded the National Lesbian & Gay Journalist Association’s Award for Excellence in HIV/AIDS Coverage for a segment about HIV laws. She lives in New Jersey with her wife and daughter.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/press-room/2021/8/30/22648361/amber-hall-joins-vox-as-deputy-editorial-director-talk-podcasts">https://www.vox.com/press-room/2021/8/30/22648361/amber-hall-joins-vox-as-deputy-editorial-director-talk-podcasts</a>

vox Amber Hall Joins Vox as Deputy Editorial Director, Talk Podcasts

Vox VP of audio Liz Kelly Nelson announced today that Amber Hall has joined the network as deputy editorial director, talk podcasts. In t...

Why false claims about Covid-19 vaccines and infertility are so powerful

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MXkKirdvtDDGHMlT7PoVdClXSqE=/0x622:5472x3487/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22809314/GettyImages_1234756671.jpg" /></div>
This spring, a Miami private school <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/miami-private-school-won-t-employ-teachers-who-get-covid-n1265462">banned staff from getting the Covid-19 vaccine</a>. The reason, according to the school’s co-founder, was “tens of thousands of women all over the world” had experienced reproductive problems just from being near someone who was vaccinated.
While there is no medical evidence for this claim, the school, Centner Academy, was firm: “Until this topic is investigated more thoroughly, it is in the best interests of the children to protect them from the unknown implications of being in close proximity for the entire day with a teacher who has very recently taken the Covid-19 injection,” a letter to parents stated.
Centner has not been alone in its concerns — it’s become a <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/covid-vaccine-shedding-myth-fact-check-20210512.html">common theme among vaccine skeptics</a> that getting the shot, or even being around someone who has gotten it, can somehow harm women’s fertility.
This idea, however, has no basis in science. The vaccine “has been studied among women who are trying to get pregnant, who are pregnant, who are breastfeeding” and “we have not seen any adverse impacts of the vaccines on fertility,” Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at NYU and Bellevue Hospital, told Vox. This message has been confirmed by <a href="https://www.acog.org/news/news-releases/2021/02/medical-experts-assert-covid-vaccines-do-not-impact-fertility">the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists</a>, the <a href="https://www.asrm.org/covid-update-16">American Society for Reproductive Medicine</a>, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/technology/covid-vaccine-period-conspiracy.html">long</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/28/coronavirus-vaccines-dont-cause-infertility/">list</a> of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/opinion/covid-vaccine-rumors.html">medical experts</a>.
But the myth that vaccines can harm reproductive health remains concerningly widespread, traveling from a handful of anti-vaccine activists to conservative commentators to influencers who amplify it on Instagram and YouTube. In <a href="https://mediaschool.indiana.edu/news-events/news/item.html?n=nearly-half-of-survey-respondents-believe-vaccine-misinformation">one June survey</a>, 25 percent of respondents and more than 52 percent of those who did not intend to get vaccinated said they believed vaccines could damage women’s fertility.
False claims about vaccines and fertility also tap into larger trends in American culture: a skepticism around medical treatments and an emphasis on natural “wellness,” especially where female reproduction is concerned. Wellness ideology can offer women, who have historically been dismissed and discriminated against in medical settings, a sense of control over their bodies, even if that control is based on false information.
“So many women have had that experience of not being taken seriously,” Carol-Ann Farkas, an English professor at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences who studies health and pop culture, told Vox. And purveyors of anti-vaccine disinformation can offer not just a sense that someone is listening but a feeling of clarity and certainty that real science can’t always match. “People want to know answers,” Farkas said.
All this means that combating worries about the vaccines and fertility will require not just debunking the misinformation involved, but addressing the ways the medical system has failed American women — and allowed an amorphous wellness culture to swoop in and fill the gap.
Myths around Covid-19 vaccines and infertility follow a few different patterns.
First, there are misconceptions around the vaccine and people’s menstrual cycles. Some people have <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/20/1016912079/the-life-cycle-of-a-covid-19-vaccine-lie">reported unusually heavy periods</a> after getting the Covid-19 shot, which isn’t necessarily surprising — “there is definitely a connection between your immune system and your menstrual cycle,” Gounder said. But these effects, if someone experiences them at all, should be short-lived. “You can have a change in your menstrual cycle, but that does not affect your fertility,” Gounder said.
Then there’s the idea that your vaccine could harm someone else’s reproductive system. This myth is often connected to the idea of <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/vaccine-shedding#about-vaccine-shedding">vaccine shedding</a>, in which a person “sheds” parts of an inoculation from the body after receiving a shot. The idea is that these shed components could potentially throw off other people’s menstrual cycles or otherwise harm their reproductive systems. <a href="https://cassingram.com/covid-19-shots-cause-death-and-disease-in-the-unvaccinated/">One viral article</a>, for example, makes the false claim that young girls and postmenopausal women are suddenly getting periods, sometimes with “grapefruit-sized blood clots,” just from being near vaccinated people.
<a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/vaccine-shedding#about-vaccine-shedding">Shedding is a real phenomenon</a>, seen with vaccines made from attenuated live viruses, such as the chickenpox vaccine. However, the viruses used in these vaccines are in a weakened state: Even if they are “shed” by someone after vaccination, they are unlikely to infect anyone else. And, perhaps most crucially, none of the Covid-19 vaccines currently in use in the US are made from live viruses. “There is no virus to shed,” Gounder said.
Indeed, the main way your vaccine can impact someone else is by protecting them: When you’re vaccinated, you’re less likely to give that person Covid-19, Gounder added.
Finally, there’s a separate claim that vaccines developed to attack the coronavirus spike protein could also attack a different protein, syncytin-1, that occurs in the human placenta. However, Alice Lu-Culligan and Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at Yale, studied the spike protein and found no meaningful similarity to syncytin-1, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/opinion/covid-vaccine-rumors.html">they wrote in the New York Times</a> earlier this year. They also studied serum from women with Covid-19 and found no effect of coronavirus antibodies on syncytin-1. Essentially, there is no basis for the idea that vaccines would harm this protein.
The claims that vaccines can cause infertility have no science to back them up, but they’ve been amplified by high-profile people. In particular, Naomi Wolf — the author of the feminist book The Beauty Myth who’s now known for her anti-vaccine views — <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/20/1016912079/the-life-cycle-of-a-covid-19-vaccine-lie">tweeted a link</a> in April to a Facebook group containing anti-vaccine activists, claiming that “Hundreds of women on this page say that they are having bleeding/clotting after vaccination, or that they bleed oddly AROUND vaccinated women. Unconfirmed, needs more investigation, but lots of reports.”
Wolf’s tweet got attention and began to amplify the myths around vaccines and fertility, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/20/1016912079/the-life-cycle-of-a-covid-19-vaccine-lie">according to NPR</a>. The myths also got another boost when Centner Academy announced its policy, gaining <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/miami-private-school-won-t-employ-teachers-who-get-covid-n1265462">news coverage in the US</a> and abroad. Sherri Tenpenny, a prominent anti-vaccine activist who’s been identified as <a href="https://www.counterhate.com/disinformationdozen">one of 12 people</a> spreading a majority of vaccine disinformation on social media, has also <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-sperm-vaccine/fact-check-no-evidence-mrna-covid-19-vaccines-affect-sperm-idUSL2N2N42EC">promoted the idea</a> that Covid-19 vaccines harm fertility, falsely claiming that the coronavirus spike protein “can bind to the ovary” and that vaccines are part of a conspiracy by “the globalists and the de-population eugenicists, the stated Satanists who are out to destroy the world.”
Not all vaccine skeptics lead with such inflammatory language. While social media platforms have taken some steps to curb disinformation, popular wellness influencers in recent months have shared anti-vaccine messages mixed in with <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a35823360/covid-19-vaccine-qanon-wellness-influencers/">recipes for smoothie bowls</a> or advice on home births. People who don’t oppose vaccines can get sucked in, at least momentarily. And the mix of anti-vaccine sentiment with tips about pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding can make it seem like choosing not to get vaccinated is the “natural,” or even responsible, choice for a would-be parent.
Part of the reason that false claims about the Covid-19 shot and the reproductive system have been able to get traction is that they feed into an existing discourse around reproductive health and wellness that has for years been encouraging women, in particular, to avoid vaccines and other medical treatments. As Farkas put it, “women have been primed to mistrust medical authority throughout their whole lives.”
Conversations around vaccine skepticism and reproductive health have overlapped for years, with many of the same prominent people promoting both anti-vaccine sentiment and a supposedly “natural” approach to birth control, pregnancy, and parenting.
One such person is Mayim Bialik, whose past statements started getting renewed scrutiny when she was selected as a Jeopardy co-host earlier this summer. She <a href="https://people.com/parents/mayim-bialik-talks-attachment-parenting-with-cbb/">said in 2009</a> that hers was “a non-vaccinating family.” She has also endorsed <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/new-jeopardy-host-mayim-bialik-1216461/">skepticism around hormonal birth control</a>, calling it “a powerful drug with a lot of side effects.” As <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/new-jeopardy-host-mayim-bialik-1216461/">E.J. Dickson reports at Rolling Stone</a>, Bialik is also a home birth advocate who said in a 2010 interview that “there are those among us who believe that if the baby can’t survive a home labor, it is OK for it to pass peacefully.” While Bialik said she herself did not subscribe to this view, she said that “some” feel that “if a baby cannot make it through birth, it is not favored evolutionarily.”
Bialik has since <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/new-jeopardy-host-mayim-bialik-1216461/">walked back her comments</a> on vaccines, saying that while her family “delayed vaccinations for reasons you don’t necessarily get to know about,” her children have had vaccines and she has been vaccinated against Covid-19. And a spokesperson for Bialik told Vox that “she believes in the science behind vaccines and traditional medicine.” But Bialik is just one of many celebrities and influencers to question vaccines as part of a larger, allegedly holistic or wellness-based ethos around reproductive and family health.
Another is Christiane Northrup, an OB-GYN <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a35823360/covid-19-vaccine-qanon-wellness-influencers/">once described by Harper’s Bazaar</a> as “something of a den mother to the New Age and anti-vaxx communities.” Boasting more than 700,000 followers across Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, <a href="https://www.drnorthrup.com/natural-birth/">Northrup advocates unmedicated childbirth</a>, which she says “can empower a woman for the rest of her life, leaving her with unshakable trust in her own Mother Bear wisdom” and even eliminate her fear of death. She is <a href="https://www.drnorthrup.com/pill-lowers-sex-drive/">dubious about birth control pills</a>, writing, “as long as you don’t mind putting your ovaries on ‘automatic pilot’ and ignoring your fertility, there’s nothing that comes close to the pill for sheer convenience.” And this year, she <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a35823360/covid-19-vaccine-qanon-wellness-influencers/">came out against the Covid-19 vaccine</a>, saying it would disrupt human enlightenment and “vibrations.”
Such voices are often powerful, especially in a time like the pandemic when actual science is rife with uncertainties and questions. Northrup, for example, is “so good at selling her interpretation of what it means to have to be a healthy woman,” says Farkas.
And it’s no surprise that New Age-inflected skepticism around traditional medical treatments — and embrace of alternatives — have caught on especially in the realm of women’s reproductive health. Fertility, pregnancy, and childbirth can be both highly important and deeply fraught for women and anyone who can get pregnant. “It’s one thing for me to care for or neglect my own body,” Farkas said, “but when you’re trying to create a whole other body,” it’s an added layer of responsibility, not to mention another set of complex and confusing medical principles to understand.
Moreover, a patriarchal society creates “this added burden for women to do womanhood right and to do motherhood right,” Farkas said. Long before Covid-19, women felt pressure to eschew epidurals, baby formula, and other medical treatments, feeling that “somehow every biomedical intervention that you accept takes away from this ideal of natural feminine motherhood.”
Meanwhile, Northrup and other New Age or holistic influencers offer a path to good womanhood and good health — as long as you do all the “right” things (like meditation, cleanses, or supplements) and avoid the wrong ones (like vaccines or C-sections). Their recommendations may be complex, but they can feel empowering because, unlike traditional medical treatments, “it’s all stuff that you can do yourself,” Farkas said.
That may be especially appealing to women, who have often been dismissed, ignored, or mistreated in medical settings. For example, clinicians have long underestimated and undertreated <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210406164124.htm">women’s pain</a> — especially <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/8/10/21336312/covid-19-pregnancy-birth-black-maternal-mortality">Black women’s pain</a> — because of gender and racial stereotypes. Such stereotypes may contribute to the underdiagnosis of common ailments like endometriosis, an often painful disorder in which tissue similar to the uterine lining grows outside the uterus. It affects one in 10 women but takes <a href="https://www.yalemedicine.org/conditions/endometriosis">an average of 10 years</a> to diagnose.
Moreover, many reproductive health issues have historically been shrouded in stigma and silence. For example, issues like infertility or painful periods were things people were embarrassed to discuss with family members, let alone in public. “For decades, these were things you didn’t talk about at all,” Marcelle Cedars, a reproductive endocrinologist at the University of California San Francisco, told Vox. Even today, people may be uncomfortable discussing issues around sex and fertility with their doctors, preferring to do their own research online.
But when they do so, they can be bombarded with misinformation that’s hard to distinguish from fact. After all, Cedars said, “everything on the internet looks like data.”
Because misinformation around vaccines and fertility — and around women’s health, wellness, and medical care more generally — can be seductive and convincing, it’s not easy to combat. People need correct information from credible experts in vaccines and infectious diseases, Gounder said, as well as education in how to identify conspiracy theories. Social media companies have taken some steps to curb misinformation on their platforms, but <a href="https://www.vox.com/22622070/facebook-data-covid-19-vaccine-misinformation-researchers-access-nyu-academics">some researchers say</a> they need to be more transparent about how conspiracy theories spread online and who’s coming into contact with them.
And when it comes to convincing people to get a vaccine, just telling them what to do may not be the best approach. “We spend too much time saying, ‘You should do this,’” Cedars said, “and I think we need to spend more time saying, ‘What are your concerns?’” For people who are worried about preserving their ability to have children in the future, “their concerns are real, and we need to validate those and try to address those rather than speaking chapter and verse,” she explained.
Making space for questions is especially important when clinicians are treating people who have historically faced discrimination in medical settings because of their race or gender. “When you’re asking questions, you’re turning over the power of the conversation to the other person,” which is especially important when someone has felt disempowered in the past, Gounder said.
It’s also crucial to change the way doctors treat patients so that they don’t feel disempowered in the first place. Among undergraduates hoping for a career in medicine, Farkas says she already sees the attitude “that doctor knows best and patients will just find all kinds of nonsense on the internet.” But such an approach is paternalistic and dismissive. “Changing the culture of medical education is important,” Farkas said.
In the short term, even as they make space for concerns, doctors need to be clear with patients about the dangers of Covid-19 — a very real, proven risk to anyone who is unvaccinated, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00578-y">especially if they become pregnant</a>.
“Young, healthy women are getting very sick, on ventilators,” with babies even being delivered early because their mothers have Covid-19, Cedars said. In talking about reproductive health and Covid-19, if people are worried about a theoretical risk to their future fertility from getting the vaccine, “we just have to focus on the very real risks we know do exist from the virus itself,” Cedars said.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22639366/covid-19-vaccine-fertility-pregnancy-myths">https://www.vox.com/22639366/covid-19-vaccine-fertility-pregnancy-myths</a>

vox Why false claims about Covid-19 vaccines and infertility are so powerful

This spring, a Miami private school banned staff from getting the Covid-19 vaccine . The reason, according to the school’s co-founder, was ...

20 years after Aaliyah’s death, her story only feels more tragic

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Aaliyah. The R&B singer, born Aaliyah Dana Haughton and nicknamed Baby Girl but best known by her first name, died in a plane crash on August 25, 2001, at 22 years old. Alongside that anniversary comes a notable milestone: On August 20, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/08/20/aaliyah-streaming/">Aaliyah’s music catalog began making its way to streaming for the first time</a>.
In her lifetime, Aaliyah was celebrated as one of pop’s most forward-looking and futuristic artists. She still is: A <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/3174924/aaliyah-self-titled-20-years/">2021 MTV News article</a> declared that listening to her 2001 self-titled album “still sounds like the future.” Yet until this month, the only Aaliyah album available to stream was her 1994 debut, Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number — which meant that listening to any Aaliyah song on streaming meant automatically sending royalties to <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/1/30/18192932/lifetime-surviving-r-kelly-documentary-sexual-abuse">R. Kelly</a>, the album’s producer and Aaliyah’s alleged abuser.
Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, is at the center of the other big Aaliyah milestone of this month. On August 18, opening statements began at <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/r-kelly-trial-explained.html">Kelly’s trial on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking</a>. Aaliyah appears as Jane Doe No. 1 on Kelly’s indictment, and she is likely Kelly’s first known victim.
For a very long time, however, that’s not how the world told their story. Instead of a story about abuse, the story of R. Kelly and Aaliyah was framed as a love story.
Court records show that Aaliyah and Kelly were married in an illegal ceremony in 1994, when Aaliyah was 15 and Kelly 27. The wedding was quickly annulled, and Kelly and Aaliyah both denied it ever took place. (<a href="https://www.complex.com/music/r-kelly-attorney-backtracks-declining-deny-sexual-contact-with-aaliyah">Kelly has continued to deny it at his trial</a>.)
Since Aaliyah’s 2001 death, stories that have filtered out from Aaliyah’s friends, family, and boyfriends suggest that Kelly abused her badly. Additionally, since <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/4/25/17248084/r-kelly-sexual-misconduct-allegations-timeline">news of Kelly’s continued abusive relationships and his so-called “sex cult” broke in 2017</a> amid the Me Too movement, discussions about what he did to Aaliyah have acquired a widespread moral outrage that they lacked just a few years ago.
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1630368034_7283_75062" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22804621,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WG4194FuA5tRqUHIKY8Lt6jYR7E=/0x0:3000x2554/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/llWNwrAQNkMOVuuIJoil8xMbPyo=/0x0:3000x2554/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rZKsFK6tz9wMGfG90BPcTwZR5GQ=/0x0:3000x2554/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yxnnoW0UGy65XNwfRtNKHn6VWr4=/0x0:3000x2554/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aKDWDo5JsqCNioo3WhRvUwn4iDo=/0x0:3000x2554/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/M8_uD_nzlSKZVVyevN8oqYyBzNc=/0x0:3000x2554/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5uOgybE-2-NIxnmAcLhc_0nunGo=/0x0:3000x2554/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/OAptXckZPX6OzL_6xD5_dF1dEsQ=/0x0:3000x2554/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aosjHrVcZpYHDch-RDJhnFOWZAM=/0x0:3000x2554/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="3000" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/V84ue96pjq_ckrUfQTSC1uPAjP0=/0x0:3000x2554/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QNVMAX_qSJlYwCYpvOBv6hr5Vds=/0x0:3000x2554/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zUAaeUVr5vD77-EPtQQX3iIkJeE=/0x0:3000x2554/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0AUN4HS6HWIXZzhuvex7R9paaYA=/0x0:3000x2554/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WNtMnC4RvxtCdtWEyw8L8pzOd_w=/0x0:3000x2554/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/N7J6vnkD_mqvxFPE27Ib3QcyKLY=/0x0:3000x2554/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/i_WAv2v-4Ww7jTjDyCuDupVcycY=/0x0:3000x2554/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1POBw5QA8wCoXoIiNa8JJan00fQ=/0x0:3000x2554/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Zi83EClN3IuA92U_TvgagAcb8yY=/0x0:3000x2554/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6SStJiaxMlExj25rro0ZqYGubJ8=/0x0:3000x2554/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2554):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804621/82544795.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Fans of Aaliyah turned a record store mural of the singer into a shrine after her death.</figcaption>
<cite>Steve Grayson/WireImage</cite></figure>
“Theirs wasn’t a love story that defied age,” writes journalist Kathy Iandoli in her 2021 biography <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fbaby-girl-better-known-as-aaliyah-9781797128061%2F9781982156848&referrer=vox.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fculture%2F22621692%2Faaliyah-death-20-year-anniversary-r-kelly-trial" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://bookshop.org/books/baby-girl-better-known-as-aaliyah-9781797128061/9781982156848\u0026referrer=vox.com\u0026sref=https://www.vox.com/culture/22621692/aaliyah-death-20-year-anniversary-r-kelly-trial\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22385733__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://bookshop.org/books/baby-girl-better-known-as-aaliyah-9781797128061/9781982156848","referrer":"vox.com","sref":"https://www.vox.com/culture/22621692/aaliyah-death-20-year-anniversary-r-kelly-trial","xcust":"___vx__p_22385733__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>Baby Girl: Better Known as Aaliyah</a>; “it was a tragedy that Aaliyah endured and somehow moved past to become an icon in her own right without him.”
Even in 1994, it should have been clear just from the sheer age difference and power differential between Aaliyah and Kelly — Aaliyah 15 and a child, Kelly 27 and her professional mentor — that any romantic relationship between them would most likely hurt her. It also should have been clear that the responsibility for any such relationship rested with the adult in the room: Kelly.
Instead, in the aftermath of the relationship — both before Kelly’s 2006 arrest for the possession of child pornography and throughout his professional rehabilitation in the years that followed, all the way up until the news of his so-called “sex cult” broke in 2017 — their secret marriage was treated as an amusingly soapy celebrity scandal. Moreover, R. Kelly’s abuse of Aaliyah has been treated as something shameful about Aaliyah rather than something shameful about Kelly.
Aaliyah worked hard to move on from Kelly after news of their marriage went public. She stopped working with him, embracing a new sound with Missy Elliot and Timbaland. In the seven years between distancing herself from Kelly and her death, Aaliyah skillfully played down the whole incident with the press every time it was mentioned in public.
But in an odd way, the story of what R. Kelly did to Aaliyah would set her image. As her star rose, her youth and innocence would become central to the way the world understood her sexuality, and her sexuality, in turn, would be central to what the world loved about her.
So when we talk about Aaliyah today, 20 years after her death, we find ourselves faced with the task of untangling Kelly’s abuse from Aaliyah’s image — and the question of whether it’s even possible for us to do so.
Aaliyah and R. Kelly met through Aaliyah’s uncle Barry Hankerson. Hankerson was Kelly’s manager, and when Aaliyah was 12 years old, Hankerson brought her into the studio and had her sing for Kelly.
At 12, Aaliyah had already been pushing for years to break into the industry. She <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl19QapsUWA">appeared on Star Search</a> at age 10. She sang with her aunt Gladys Knight at one of Knight’s Las Vegas concerts at age 11. By age 12, she was, Hankerson thought, ready to start thinking about an album. Kelly agreed. In 1993, when Aaliyah was 14 years old, she and Kelly began work on her debut: Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number.
The album was a hit. It <a href="https://www.billboard.com/charts/billboard-200/1994-06-11">debuted at No. 24 on Billboard</a> in May 1994, and it earned Aaliyah nominations at the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/tv/1995/01/29/mariah-carey-boyz-ii-men-lead-ama-nominees/089c99dd-2d68-4854-8599-2759eff76057/">American Music Awards</a> and the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wgsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA20#v=onepage&q&f=false">Soul Train Awards</a>. Most critics thought they knew what made it so good: R. Kelly.
“Aaliyah’s ‘Back & Forth’ is a fixture in the pop Top 5 partly because of R. Kelly. … He not only produced and wrote ‘Back & Forth,’ but he also does the rapping,” explained the LA Times in 1994. “Getting airplay for a single by a new artist is tough — unless it features R. Kelly doing everything but the lead vocals. Fans love just about anything he does, and ‘Back & Forth’ is the next best thing to a new R. Kelly single.”
Even after Aaliyah had established herself and her voice and everyone knew what an Aaliyah album sounded like, Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number still sounded strikingly like an R. Kelly album rather than an Aaliyah album. “It was basically like listening to an R. Kelly album, but with a little girl singing,” <a href="https://www.vibe.com/features/editorial/age-aint-nothing-but-a-number-aaliyah-week-448053/">album sequencer Jeff Sledge told Vibe in 2014</a>. “Obviously the subject matter wasn’t sexual, but the overall production and the sound of the record was like a Robert album as a little girl.”
Kelly seems to have been intent on presenting Aaliyah to the world as a miniature version of himself, and not just in the way her album sounded. In Iandoli’s Baby Girl, Aaliyah’s stylist Kimya Warfield Rainge recalls that Kelly insisted Aaliyah be dressed like him for her videos, in an oversize sweatsuit that would reveal her midriff, with dark sunglasses. He also produced a leather vest for her, a miniature version of the vest he wore on his album covers and tours, with a license plate for Illinois — Kelly’s home state — on the back. Rainge didn’t feel the vest particularly fit Aaliyah’s look, but both Aaliyah and Kelly insisted she wear it. “He was the influencer,” Kimya said. “They already had an image set for her.”
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<figcaption>On the front and back covers of Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number, Aliyah is wearing the vest R. Kelly had made for her: black leather, with an Illinois license plate on the back. Kelly himself looms out of focus in the background.</figcaption>
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Kelly didn’t only insist that Aaliyah dress like him for her videos and album production. In the months following her album drop, <a href="https://twixnmix.tumblr.com/post/169980386502/aaliyah-and-r-kelly-photographed-by-anthony">they began to dress alike everywhere they went</a>, which was quite a few places. They were photographed together in public often. They told everyone they were best friends. The gossip press began to raise a collective eyebrow.
“The two are obviously close,” snarked YSB magazine in 1994. “It’s no wonder they were thought to be cousins. NOT!”
“Everybody seems to think that y’all are either girlfriend and boyfriend or cousins or friends,” said Sherry Carter on BET’s Video Soul Gold, when Aaliyah and R. Kelly appeared in matching outfits. “Let’s get the record straight.”
“I better go get me a white Jeep,” Kelly joked, referring to the OJ Simpson Bronco chase. “Uh-oh.”
“Well, no, we’re not related,” Aaliyah responded. “At all. We’re just very close. This is my best friend in the whole wide world.”
Later, Carter asked Aaliyah how old she was. She refused to say, and she would continue to refuse until she turned 16.
As Aaliyah’s debut album year went on, the “Are R. Kelly and Aaliyah secretly together?” story began to evolve. It turned into, “Are R. Kelly and Aaliyah secretly married?” Both Kelly’s camp and Aaliyah denied the rumors.
Then in December 1994, <a href="https://www.vibe.com/features/editorial/r-kellys-dec-1994-jan-1995-cover-story-superfreak-629059/">Vibe published their marriage certificate</a>, and the rumor became fact.
In the nearly 30 years since that clandestine, illegal marriage, there’s been a fair bit of reporting on what occurred, most explosively in <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/1/30/18192932/lifetime-surviving-r-kelly-documentary-sexual-abuse">the 2019 Lifetime docuseries Surviving R. Kelly</a> and from the journalist Jim DeRogatis, who first broke the story of Kelly’s child sex tape in 2000 and has been reporting on Kelly ever since. Here’s what seems to have happened.
“All but one of my sources said [Aaliyah] and Kelly began having sexual contact during her first recording sessions,” writes DeRogatis in his 2019 book <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/6/5/18652167/r-kelly-jim-derogatis-interview-soulless">Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly</a>. Aaliyah was 14 at the time. In Surviving R. Kelly, Kelly’s former backup singer Jovante Cunningham says that she once saw Kelly in bed with a 15-year-old Aaliyah on their tour bus and that Kelly was doing “things that an adult should not be doing with a child.”
Kelly’s former personal assistant Demetrius Smith has said — in Soulless, in Surviving R. Kelly, in his own book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-Behind-Looking-Inside-Out/dp/1456870513" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://www.amazon.com/Man-Behind-Looking-Inside-Out/dp/1456870513?ascsubtag=[]vx[p]22385733[m]m-placeholder[s]s-placeholder[t]w[c]c-placeholder[r]r-placeholder[d]d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":99,"subtag_delim_length":2,"subtag_key":"ascsubtag","subtag_data":{"ascsubtag":"[]vx[p]22385733[m]m-placeholder[s]s-placeholder[t]w[c]c-placeholder[r]r-placeholder[d]d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>The Man Behind the Man</a>, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/nyregion/r-kelly-trial-racketeering.html">at Kelly’s 2021 trial</a> — that Aaliyah and Kelly got married because Kelly got Aaliyah pregnant.
According to Smith, Aaliyah called Kelly when he was touring in Miami to tell him she thought she might be pregnant. Kelly consulted with his lawyer and accountant, both of whom told him that he should marry Aaliyah. At Kelly’s 2021 trial, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/r-kelly-trial-aaliyah-marriage_n_61242355e4b07fee0cb08a92?ft7">a Jane Doe testified</a> that Kelly went through with the wedding so that he could legally give Aaliyah permission to get an abortion, since otherwise she would have needed her parents’ consent to access one.
Kelly and Aaliyah flew to Chicago, where Smith says he bribed an official to obtain false documents showing that Aaliyah was 18 years old, and the pair had a quickie city hall wedding in suburban Maywood. Their marriage license is dated August 31, 1994.
As Smith’s story goes, Aaliyah returned home to her family in Detroit the day after the wedding and told them what had happened. Her family took charge of the situation, and on September 29, 1994, the marriage was annulled. Aaliyah told her family that she never wanted to see Kelly again, and they set about making sure she would never have to.
The family understanding at the time seems to have been that the marriage, while plainly a bad idea, was just a case of two kids who cared for each other getting in over their heads.
“Rob made a mistake,” Smith says in Soulless. “That’s how the family looked at it.”
“We just thought, ‘This guy is stupid. He’s like a big, dumb 15-year-old hisself,’” an anonymous member of Aaliyah’s family says in Soulless. “It was just, ‘How dumb can you be, boy? You’re lucky we are the family!’”
But not long after the marriage ended, the people who were closest to Aaliyah seemed to change their minds about Kelly’s harmlessness. “I had Aaliyah’s mother cry on my shoulder and say her daughter’s life was ruined, Aaliyah’s life was never the same after that,” <a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/2013/12/16/read-the-stomach-churning-sexual-assault-accusations-against-r-kelly-in-full/">DeRogatis said in a 2013 interview with the Village Voice</a>.
Damon Dash, who was dating Aaliyah at the time of her death, says in Surviving R. Kelly that Aaliyah was too traumatized by her relationship with Kelly to tell him everything that had happened, and that she would only say, “That dude was a bad man.” In <a href="https://www.nickcannon.com/news/cannons-class-ft-dame-dash">a 2019 interview with Nick Cannon</a>, Dash spoke more plainly: “That ni**a raped my girl,” he said.
Any sexual contact between Kelly and Aaliyah in 1994 would have been at the very least statutory rape. Yet even after the publication of their marriage certificate made it clear that something had happened between them, the media treated the story as at best an unconventional love story and at worst as a judgment on Aaliyah’s so-called “Lolita” image: The little girl assuring a grown man that “age ain’t nothing but a number” got what was coming to her. Often, it treated the story simply as a sudsy celebrity scandal, a fun pop culture reference to break out and dish over.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, tongue in cheek, referred to Aaliyah as “the love of Kelly’s life” in a 1994 concert review. “The recording of this disc makes about as much sense as R. Kelly marrying Aaliyah,” lamented the Tampa Tribune in a 1994 review of the swiftly forgotten debut album by a girl group called Y?N-Vee. Neither Kelly nor Aaliyah had anything to do with the album, but the scandal of their marriage seemed to be easy fodder for a buzzy one-liner, something to toss dismissively over your shoulder to establish your own coolness.
“It’s tantalising to imagine Aaliyah as a beautiful Lolita trapped by a scandalously doomed romance; it adds to the thrill of hearing her love songs,” <a href="https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/aaliyah-little-miss-thing">mused i-D in 1995</a>. “Obviously, performers have been lying about their ages since the dawn of time,” <a href="https://www.vibe.com/features/editorial/r-kellys-dec-1994-jan-1995-cover-story-superfreak-629059/">said Vibe</a>. “But that’s show business: smoke and mirrors, mikes and sound checks. Marriage, however, is something else, and if Aaliyah and R. Kelly’s is real, then her pseudo-Lolita image becomes reality. And R. Kelly’s sex-man image gets that much murkier.”
Kelly wrote <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRwhm-B6yNI">“Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number,”</a> the song that created Aaliyah’s “beautiful pseudo-Lolita image” in the first place. He dressed her for it and produced it, and the world was happy to give him credit when the song was a hit. Then the song became inextricably linked to a scandal, and responsibility for it somehow transferred to Aaliyah.
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“Just how old is newlywed Aaliyah?” demanded USA Today in 1994. The article goes on to warn of dire consequences for Aaliyah if she’s underage: “If she’s 15, there are some problems,” says the marriage bureau’s Louis Barnes. “The state says she has to be at least 16 with parents’ consent. She can go to jail.” It lists no potential consequences for Kelly.
In <a href="https://www.vibe.com/features/editorial/r-kellys-dec-1994-jan-1995-cover-story-superfreak-629059/">the Vibe article that broke the story of the illicit marriage</a>, Aaliyah is presented paradoxically: so young as to be a wicked temptress, while also more mature than Kelly himself.
The article quotes Jamie Foster Brown, the editor of Sister2Sister magazine, who had been covering Kelly for years by the time this story became public. Brown is disparaging to Aaliyah and her choices: “I kept hearing complaints from people about her being in the studio with all those men,” Brown says. “At 15, you have all those hormones and no brain attached to them.” Brown goes on to suggest that R. Kelly and Aaliyah might just be a good match, “because Aaliyah has a mature mind, and Robert is such a big kid.”
Kelly, the big kid, continued to flourish professionally after the scandal. Mature-minded/Lolita-esque-temptress Aaliyah saw her career suffer.
<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=2MMDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA54#v=onepage&q&f=false">Kelly received his first Grammy nominations in 1995</a>. His 1995 self-titled album <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/1430768/r-kelly-crowns-himself-king-of-rb/">went quadruple platinum</a>. Meanwhile, when Aaliyah’s picture was shown at the 1995 Soul Train Awards, <a href="https://groups.google.com/g/rec.music.funky/c/7FoOGoUxogg">the audience booed</a>. The scandal of their marriage was considered her fault. She was a little girl who tempted a grown man into jeopardy. She was the one to blame.
“Aaliyah got villainized,” her cousin and Blackground Records executive Jomo Hankerson said in 2014 <a href="https://madamenoire.com/441983/aaliyahs-cousin-says-villainized-r-kelly-marriage-scandal-dont-understand-upset-baby-girl/">on The Ryan Cameron Morning Show</a>. “That’s what made the transition to the second album difficult. … It was hard for us to get producers on the album. She was 16, 17 at the time of the second album. I just didn’t understand why they were upset with Baby Girl.”
Regardless of the industry’s reluctance to work with her, Aaliyah got that second album together. She recruited then-up-and-comers Missy Elliot and Timbaland to produce for her. She maintained the tomboy image Kelly had built for her but transformed it into something sleeker, less a mirror reflection of her former mentor.
Aaliyah once again became a massive hit, even bigger than before. Her 1996 album One in a Million <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150713200457/http://riaa.com/goldandplatinumdata.php?resultpage=1&table=SEARCH_RESULTS&artist=aaliyah&sort=Artist&perPage=25">went double platinum</a>. Her single “If Your Girl Only Knew” <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/aaliyah/chart-history/rhythmic-40/song/45818">was in the Billboard top 10</a>. This time, no one could credit Kelly with Aaliyah’s success.
“From the intro, you know,” began the Voice’s album review. “She’s back, and it’s clear — no R. Kelly.”
Where Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number had sounded just like Kelly’s Marvin Gaye-inflected branch of R&B, One in a Million was recognizably something new. It was R&B reaching out and meeting hip-hop on its own turf, Aaliyah’s voice cool and precise over Timbaland’s electronic beats. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/music/aaliyah-one-in-a-million/">Slant would call it</a>, in 2001, “undoubtedly one of the most influential R&B albums of the ’90s.” Aaliyah, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/08/arts/music-spins-a-reminder-of-the-real-aaliyah.html">Kelefa Sanneh would argue in the New York Times in 2002</a>, “helped invent a style that might be called avant-garde R&B,” and One in a Million was where it began.
Aaliyah’s style, too, was evolving. She stuck to the baggy low-slung pants Kelly had dressed her in, revealing her midriff, but she made the look more feminine, more rooted in her own aesthetic. When she appeared <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJUN8OdRyeg">in a Tommy Hilfiger ad</a> in low Tommy jeans and a tiny bra top, she made the look iconic.
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“Aaliyah is … among the few musical icons who is recognizable from just a few items of clothing,” <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/exkxep/15-years-after-her-death-aaliyah-is-as-relevant-as-ever">wrote Vice in 2016</a>. “Michael had the glove and fedora, Sinatra had the stiffly ironed suits, Nina had the headwraps, Prince had the colour purple, and Aaliyah had baggy pants and a crop top. With these two things alone she created one of the most lasting fashion looks of all time, combining femininity, masculinity and androgyny into one trend-setting game changer.”
But even as Aaliyah’s sound and image moved away from R. Kelly, he would continue to haunt her career. The idea of Aaliyah and R. Kelly as a cockeyed love story would go on, too, continuing through her death in 2001, and to a certain extent through Kelly’s 2008 trial on child pornography charges.
“You know what? The way the story was told, they were in love,” <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/4w78xw/wendy-williams-interview-654">Wendy Williams said to Vice in 2014</a>. “He wasn’t just some old man in love with a young girl even though that was also clearly the reality of what it was. She loved him, and he loved her.” Williams was promoting the Lifetime biopic Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B, which she executive-produced, and which depicted the pair’s relationship as a complex romance.
It seemed that every time the story of Aaliyah and Kelly’s faux-marriage was told, Aaliyah remained the responsible party. She was always the figure granted agency, the one instigating scandalous acts, older than her years, while a hapless Kelly passively accepted her seduction.
“Aaliyah’s career started and ended with people talking about her age,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/02/arts/a-pioneer-briefly-of-a-new-sound.html">began a New York Times article shortly after her death</a>. “In 1994, when she was 15, she released her first album, ‘Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number,’ which sold a million copies. She didn’t sing like a little girl — even then, she had a stronger voice and a more sophisticated approach than most pop singers — and she didn’t act like one, either: the child star was reported to be a child bride, secretly married to her mentor, the R & B crooner R. Kelly.”
In Baby Girl, Iandoli describes writing a feature on R&B singer Ciara in 2004. Ciara, then 19, had just released a seductive duet with R. Kelly, and Kelly wrote the lyrics. Iandoli thought the collaboration wildly inappropriate and said so: Just two years previously, Kelly’s child pornography tape had reached the public.
Ciara’s team, outraged, threatened Iandoli with a libel suit. “She’s not Aaliyah,” they told Iandoli.
“The mention of Aaliyah by [Ciara’s] team, as if it were a mark of shame, felt so wrong,” Iandoli writes. “The blame was again placed upon the teenage girl and not the predator.”
The idea of Aaliyah as the party at fault in her relationship with R. Kelly had by then become baked into her image, where it had expanded until it was near-universally accepted. Aaliyah became positioned in the public eye as a somehow inherently sexual teen — so whenever anyone treated her as a sex object, whether that person was R. Kelly or adults in her audience, it wasn’t their fault. It was Aaliyah’s.
A lot of teen idol pop stars are also sex symbols, and Aaliyah, with her tiny crop tops and her Veronica Lake swoop of hair, was no exception. What was striking about Aaliyah, though, was the way in which the public understanding of her sexuality became intertwined with the public understanding of her as a child. That juxtaposition was fundamental to the way people talked about Aaliyah — including Aaliyah herself.
In an interview on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeXvCmAROoU">The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn in 2000</a>, when she was 21, Aaliyah jokingly described <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQpdr7r0Rv4">her childhood appearance on Star Search</a>. “I thought I should have won,” she says. “I felt hot, I had on this hot little dress.”
“How old were you?” Kilborn asks.
She was 10, Aaliyah tells him.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be hot at 10!” Kilborn objects.
Aaliyah, laughing, overrules him. “I was hot at 10. I had a little sex appeal working back then,” she says. She describes having her mother photograph her for headshots as a child. “She said, ‘Yo, she’s got this kind of sex appeal working.’ It comes through in the pictures and on the camera.”
Aaliyah was mostly joking about being hot as a child. Yet the idea that her hotness was somehow intertwined with her childishness was embedded in her image, and she seems to have at the very least absorbed the mindset. So did the rest of the world. The New York Times article breaking the news of her death described her as “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/27/arts/aaliyah-22-singer-who-first-hit-the-charts-at-14.html">precociously sultry</a>.” Even her nickname, Baby Girl, is at once an infantile coo and a lover’s endearment.
Aaliyah got her nickname from her father, and it only became widespread after she left Kelly. First, Timbaland and Missy Elliot called her Baby Girl in private, as a mark of affection, because they had all become so close. Then in 1998, it became one of her public monikers after Timbaland rapped “Baby girl, better known as Aaliyah” on his guest verse in Aaliyah’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeCXiC5l0dU">Are You That Somebody?</a>” and laid a sample of a crying baby over Aaliyah’s vocals.
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But even this apparently wholesome professional relationship was marked by discordant overtones. <a href="https://www.distractify.com/p/did-aaliyah-and-timbaland-date">In 2011</a>, Timbaland admitted that when he met 16-year-old Aaliyah, he fell in love with her. At 23, Timbaland knew he was too old for her, and he didn’t cross the line Kelly did, maintaining that he always acted as Aaliyah’s big brother. Still, he says, “When I first met my wife, I knew I was going to marry her because she looked like Aaliyah.”
There’s no evidence to suggest that anything untoward ever happened between Timbaland and Aaliyah. Nonetheless, their relationship is another case of a youthful Aaliyah being seen as a sexual object, and of the idea of her sexuality becoming entwined with the idea of her youth: hence Baby Girl.
It is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/parenting/adultification-black-girls.html">often argued</a> that while white girls are expected to be pure and innocent and virginal well into their teens, Black girls are not granted the space to experience a girlhood at all: While <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21593569/princess-diana-explainer-crown-netflix-marilyn-monroe-britney-spears-innocence">the world obsessed over Britney Spears’s virginity</a>, it <a href="https://twitter.com/craftingmystyle/status/1369763693970432001">expected Beyoncé, at the same age, to be a fully mature adult</a>. But Aaliyah was caught in a different version of that trap, in that her youth was understood to be part of her sexual availability. It’s not that she wasn’t allowed to be young; it’s that her youth wasn’t considered a hurdle to treating her as a sexual object. It seemed, in fact, to make her sexier.
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<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1630368034_6605_75065" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22804642,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AXMUpOg7eL6uPzBHpTD_W0rIIEE=/0x0:2340x2998/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VVQ3REz-GMVRX2f8e4ZQ5Iohl-w=/0x0:2340x2998/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9jjUBWc-PvmBWwW2TnS9DGlbsas=/0x0:2340x2998/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/htI0Atv6Faqs7y32_CFhF-YFKlw=/0x0:2340x2998/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4KtQZ5quT_yZwWGlG4IEgycPZJA=/0x0:2340x2998/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GLthk8bCCVzZmDELlFf9wAe75UA=/0x0:2340x2998/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EHViGdY9jbV8IvV1v0MUAYwLJwA=/0x0:2340x2998/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XNkKHwBHFeSQRMfRNh6TiehPrL4=/0x0:2340x2998/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Y5efiE8oeUPSVAqP-RPKyfH9_Hk=/0x0:2340x2998/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="Aaliyah onstage singing into a handheld microphone." data-upload-width="2340" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/IKItNiGFDLJmgOHs6rWA8EJGISg=/0x0:2340x2998/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Ny35PLUhUBnwa6IyixN9W8AyHCg=/0x0:2340x2998/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1hdATma_2PrK2szXBQJ0D7LB4uI=/0x0:2340x2998/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/G-bat7ysD6pbUldzT2q_UYjbgaE=/0x0:2340x2998/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5h70696RKTu1D2KJoEM6d_oenBM=/0x0:2340x2998/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/M8OyMK1npvKw4uImUMiMii3mHHU=/0x0:2340x2998/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DxJL6DHihLTpUfToYKu_iTbp7yU=/0x0:2340x2998/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HHKgBkGBu4VZGY5Oc1lLkFdtIqE=/0x0:2340x2998/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/djDlSLKDRGOqTkOhgRg19UhTKxI=/0x0:2340x2998/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZCgXHXo_bw3S5LHEQtpd5Ww0t5g=/0x0:2340x2998/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2340x2998):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804642/74709082.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Performing in 1997.</figcaption>
<cite>Chris Walter/WireImage</cite></figure>
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<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1630368034_8769_75066" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22804646,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pEQQev9LusWgdWjNMC85enyDGl4=/0x0:2307x3300/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/S1J2J1dpmbDzGi-lqiwCjyY1qXU=/0x0:2307x3300/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mABv2RQsCiQ3AFti-m0H8fXdCaM=/0x0:2307x3300/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7PTSDfGqmEn_ns-gG-MeM-4OBLA=/0x0:2307x3300/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GertTWaKmPOW-E0VzqwrJ4AA61A=/0x0:2307x3300/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Ifi6vTFWXfFVsEn77SjqFup0KGw=/0x0:2307x3300/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FWKhqMz95k772WBnJiDfaqRX3UA=/0x0:2307x3300/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rbmAx4A1hf6kBQecvDklTdZvwa4=/0x0:2307x3300/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4vElMhxEe0aHXvmhD-qjgT-XBYs=/0x0:2307x3300/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="Aaliyah sitting at a table holding a champagne flute." data-upload-width="2307" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iTiN7wn3pV9l-WlJTGBaIBRV7Mw=/0x0:2307x3300/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/C6_6lNQCSvz_YQKYiCpxwPDI7k0=/0x0:2307x3300/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rhK9_eTdfY9Bix_SrLmxYZTLJns=/0x0:2307x3300/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LuGWNIx_yyneL6-8Tgw8vfwqpDo=/0x0:2307x3300/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vbOX52frevpLf7ChcKiy89adXwo=/0x0:2307x3300/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/j2PNgj_d8Qh_5BhTYcwyo7MP1js=/0x0:2307x3300/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BTJJzDznCqZV64-rKPlQGcAAu-k=/0x0:2307x3300/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/V_3UEc09lME_GLvnv4xFQjNpILg=/0x0:2307x3300/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZwyfoC1hjPBXlRYq3CLRYOvAcGw=/0x0:2307x3300/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/R02f-BJhstTLk3hnB0Tuz_n-k4c=/0x0:2307x3300/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2307x3300):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22804646/82405395.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Backstage at the 2001 MTV Movie Awards, about two months before her death.</figcaption>
<cite>KMazur/WireImage</cite></figure>
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It’s worth interrogating to what extent the idea that Aaliyah’s youth made her sexy is the result of Aaliyah having her career and her image launched by an alleged child predator. As the scholar <a href="https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/aaliyah-eternal-soul">Jason King put it in Wax Poetics in 2014</a>, “When I’m listening to Age, I’m struggling to try to listen to it out of context, but mostly I’m hearing R. Kelly as an alleged predator presenting to us his sonic and musical vision of how he wanted Aaliyah to exist in the commercial marketplace.”
So R. Kelly set a narrative — but then the rest of American culture willingly embraced it. He told the world to see a child as a sexual object, and it obliged.
What made this vision of Aaliyah as a Lolita so attractive was that it offered her viewer an out. If there was something inherently seductive about Aaliyah’s childishness, then it was not the viewer’s fault if they found her sexy. She was the one who kept repeating that age ain’t nothing but a number, even if she was only saying so because Kelly wrote the lyrics and told her to sing them. The subsequent shift of blame onto Aaliyah meant that the rest of the world could enjoy the spectacle of her sexuality without guilt. She had already taken on the guilt for the rest of the world.
Part of what made Aaliyah great is that she was able to use her escape from Kelly to launch herself even further into stardom, to remake herself as pop’s most futuristic star, to refashion the tomboy style he established for her into an instantly iconic image that screams Aaliyah, not R. Kelly. And one of the many tragedies of her early death is that we’ll never see what would have happened had she been able to transcend him entirely — and whether the cultural reckoning of the past 10 years, and the way it’s changed how we talk about women and about consent, could have helped her while she was still living.
In the Purity Chronicles, Vox looks back at the sexual and gendered mores of the late ’90s and 2000s, one pop culture phenomenon at a time. <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22452846/purity-chronicles">Read more here</a>.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22621692/aaliyah-death-20-year-anniversary-r-kelly-trial">https://www.vox.com/culture/22621692/aaliyah-death-20-year-anniversary-r-kelly-trial</a>

vox 20 years after Aaliyah’s death, her story only feels more tragic

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Aaliyah. The R&B singer, born Aaliyah Dana Haughton and nicknamed Baby Girl but be...

Taliban Would Take Back Afghan Deportees To Face Courts, Says Spokesman: Report

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Taliban Would Take Back Afghan Deportees To Face Courts, Says Spokesman: Report" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/dq2djqv4_taliban-spokesman-zabihullah-mujahid-afp_625x300_17_August_21.jpg" title="Taliban Would Take Back Afghan Deportees To Face Courts, Says Spokesman: Report" /></div>
Zabihullah Mujahid said his government would be willing to accept such deportees. (File)
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Vienna:
The Taliban government in Afghanistan would accept any Afghan migrants whose applications for asylum were rejected in Europe and they would then face court, an Austrian newspaper quoted a Taliban spokesman as saying on Monday.
Austria's conservative-led government has taken a hard line on Afghan asylum seekers and refugees within the European Union, with the interior minister initially saying Austria should keep deporting rejected asylum seekers back to Afghanistan for as long as possible.
Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer has since conceded that that is no longer possible, but said he wants "deportation centres" set up in neighbouring countries that would take them in.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the Kronen Zeitung newspaper that his government would be willing to accept such deportees.
"Yes. They would be taken to court. The court would then have to decide how to proceed with them," Zabihullah told the newspaper when asked if it would take in Afghan asylum seekers in Germany or Austria whose asylum claims had been rejected or who had committed crimes in those European countries.
He did not elaborate on why they should be taken to court or what judgement they might face there.
He also repeated his government's pledge to respect the rights of women within the framework of Islamic law, or Sharia.
"We will secure all rights that women are entitled to under Sharia," Zabihullah said.
"We will grant women Islamic rights, enable education and create conditions for work. We are in the process of putting all that in place."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/taliban-would-take-back-afghan-deportees-to-face-courts-says-spokesman-report-2524209">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/taliban-would-take-back-afghan-deportees-to-face-courts-says-spokesman-report-2524209</a>

news world Taliban Would Take Back Afghan Deportees To Face Courts, Says Spokesman: Report

Zabihullah Mujahid said his government would be willing to accept such deportees. (File) Vienna: The Taliban government in Afghanistan ...