Robyn Crawford and Whitney Houston {Why Did It End}

In Robyn Crawford’s obituary of Whitney Houston in Esquire, Crawford says, “The record company, the band members, her family, her friends, me — she fed everybody. Deep down inside that’s what made her tired. It was never easy. She never left anything undone. But it was hard.” There is obviously a pattern in the way our culture expects women of color to take care of everyone, to take care of herself last (if at all). Why are we so surprised when they crack? Why do we forget about their humanity?

Whitney was not only a drug addict. She was a mother, she was a wife, she was a daughter, a friend, and an artist. We know that she was a survivor of domestic abuse, which is a harder situation for Black women to deal with because of the racial injustice in the criminal justice system. We know that she was famous, so she was hypervisible and overcriticized for the decisions she made.

It isn’t fair to judge Whitney without keeping in mind that she was a human being, a Black woman, in a tough situation. African-American women are more likely to suffer from domestic violence than any other race. Women who abuse drugs and alcohol are more likely to suffer from domestic violence, and men who abuse drugs are more likely to commit it. It also isn’t fair to demonize Whitney for her drug abuse and its affect on her, but ignore its affects on artists like Jim Morrison, Michael Jackson, or Jimi Hendrix.

Robyn and Whitney were best friends since meeting in East Orange, New Jersey, at the age of 16.
When Whitney became a superstar, Robyn dropped out of Monmouth College to work as the singer’s personal assistant.
Whitney once called Robyn the “sister I never had,” yet, Robyn was not invited to Whitney’s funeral on Saturday.
Throughout the years there had been gossip about the relationship between the two women; however, both Whitney and Robyn maintained that they were not lovers.
In Bobby Brown’s autobiography, Whitney’s ex-husband hinted that she married him to dispel lesbian rumors.
“I believe her agenda was to clean up her image,” Bobby wrote in his memoirs.  “The media was accusing her of having a bisexual relationship with her assistant Robyn Crawford…that didn’t go too well with her image.  In Whitney’s situation, the only solution was to get married to kill all speculation.”
It’s been rumored that Whitney started doing heavy drugs after she ended her friendship with Robyn, which was right around the time that she met her ex-husband.
It is also rumored that it was Whitney’s mother, Cissy, who forced her to end her relationship with Robyn
Neither Whitney nor Robyn have ever publicly said what caused their friendship to end, and I guess that now that Whitney is gone, we will never really know her side.