No one that we can comfortably classify as human can watch the film of Ray Rice assaulting his then fiancée in the elevator and not feel appalled and sickened or at least disappointed. Even those of us who are committed to the healing sciences and understand that ones lowest vibration is not their whole vibration are still bothered by that moment in the elevator. Domestic Abuse/Intimate Partner Violence, however, while it is Ray Rice’s problem—it is not a Ray Rice problem. It is an American problem and has been since America’s birth, as has the notion that women and children (and men deemed as other) are commodities to be owned, bought, sold, beaten, abused and discarded.
The ownership of people and their commodification are the bedrock upon this nation was built and its system of commerce established. This has not fundamentally changed; we have merely expanded the range of
stakeholders to whom we tacitly extend ownership privileges. Men can own and
abuse women. Parents can own and abuse children. Police can own and abuse laws
and people. Businesses can own and abuse their employees. Lobbyist can own
politicians and abuse our democracy. Politician can own our votes and abuse our
trust. Powerful moneyed interests can own our Supreme Court and abuse justice.
Even our most cherished and well-intentioned notions of pet ownership are rooted in a basic hierarchy of power, which suggests that might makes right--our perceived dominion over them gives us the right to name, to own them, to decide their destiny. Chattel slavery was premised on the rules of animal domestication. Lives were arranged, decided and controlled much in the same ways they went about making the decisions about whether to spade or neuter their pets, much in the same ways they made decisions about separating puppies and kittens from their mothers and selling or giving them away. It is this same logic that still undergirds our society. Before you send PETA after me or my good friends who have pets come for me, I am not attacking pet “ownership,” I am merely pointing out how the logic of ownership pervades nearly every aspect our relations in our society.
Even our most cherished and well-intentioned notions of pet ownership are rooted in a basic hierarchy of power, which suggests that might makes right--our perceived dominion over them gives us the right to name, to own them, to decide their destiny. Chattel slavery was premised on the rules of animal domestication. Lives were arranged, decided and controlled much in the same ways they went about making the decisions about whether to spade or neuter their pets, much in the same ways they made decisions about separating puppies and kittens from their mothers and selling or giving them away. It is this same logic that still undergirds our society. Before you send PETA after me or my good friends who have pets come for me, I am not attacking pet “ownership,” I am merely pointing out how the logic of ownership pervades nearly every aspect our relations in our society.
Professional
sports are no different. I love football but it takes no real stretch of the
imagination to watch the scouting combines and the draft and see the analogies
to the slave auction blocks or understand the notion of teams OWNING players rights to get the gist. (See Rick Rhoden’s Forty Million Dollar
Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete.). My sense of rightness
compels me to admit my own contradiction; my honesty acknowledges that I am not
yet ready to stop watching football. Contradictions should always be confronted
even if we decide to maintain them because part of growth is also being clear
about what ones contradictions are. This awareness of our own contradictions can help us to work with others and
ourselves with understanding, sensitivity and generosity rather than simply
judgment.
Domestic
Abuse/Intimate Partner Violence has been a problem in NFL for decades. This is
an open secret. So it is good that it has now become a part of a national
conversation, so that so many women, who have had to suffer in shame, because
they could get no real support, now have a national forum that vindicates them
in a sense by providing space for their stories to gain oxygen and breathe. It also means that men who are in need of help and healing might be forced from the shadows of their own demons and through illumination find some paths to their healing. And that young folks begin
to get the message: abuse of anyone is wrong.
I
want to be clear: If you abuse children or women you deserve three things in
this order: Punishment, whether that is in the jail or under the jail; a chance
at rehabilitation, and if you have successfully done the work to resolve the
issue, a chance at redemption.
There is, however, an element of how these national issues get foregrounded that is
troubling to me. I listened to Hannah
Storm, who has worked at ESPN since 2008, speak emotionally about domestic abuse
as if she had just found out Domestic Abuse/Intimate Partner Violence existed
in the NFL. I listened to a number of pundits who have been as silent as a
mouse pissing on cotton for all these years on this issue, similarly express
righteous indignation. The indignation is certainly an appropriate response
given the severity of the crime and its pervasiveness in our society. And as
someone who grew up in house with a man whose hands were loose at times when it came to
women, I certainly have no tolerance for any man laying hands on a woman. However what
I also have a problem with is the televised Righteous Indignation that really seems to be more about performance than about social justice, more about appearing enraged
than courageous action. It has all of the theater of the person who talks trash to the criminal AFTER the criminal is in handcuffs.
You
see in order to be a Pundit who serves as a Righteously Indignant Performer you
need five things: 1) A way to get in front of a movement you didn't start and
act like you were in the lead all along--to appear heroic after the battle has
already been fought; 2) You need an issue in which you dont have to be
courageous, just merely speak like you are because now its safe to do so; 3)
You need a television camera; 4) You need a microphone; and 5) You need a Black face to
attach to the pathology.
Time
and time again, whether it’s the mythic welfare Queen or the go to option that
many European American use—the mythic Black Boogie man. We seem to be
comfortable with attaching Black face to national problems that impact all ethnicities. Black women become
the face of welfare and not the European American corporate robber barons that
nearly tanked the economy. Domestic Abuse/Intimate Partner Violence is male
problem in America and like most aspects of American life it expresses itself
in a deeply segregated fashion: Domestic Abuse/Intimate Partner Violence exists
with greater frequency in within group dynamics than between group dynamics. In
other words, abusive European American men tend abuse and rape European American
women, abusive African American men tend abuse and rape African American women,
etc.
Let
me reiterate as unequivocally as I can. If you beat on women, if you defend men
who beat on women, if you think that women are subordinate to men in any way,
we cant build so much as a sandwich together.
Neely
Fuller has cautioned that if we “don’t understand white supremacy, what it is
and how it operates. Then everything you think you know will only serve to
confuse you.” As a people whose very existence in this country is premised upon a
moral argument we must be dedicated to stamping out within our communities all
forms of abuse, within group bigotry and discrimination, even as we advance our
assault on racism and white supremacy. Both require not just our
vigilance, but our courage and integrity and a vision rooted in the greatest
good for the greatest numbers of our people. What kind of world can you really have
in which women (the givers of life) and children (the perpetuators of life) are
fundamentally unsafe from the very people who are supposed to be their protectors?
Women and children will never be able to truly move through this world fully empowered until men decide to take on males who think that manhood is about suppressing life rather than helping it blossom. Any movement towards the liberation of Black people that does not include the liberation of Black women from the tyranny of Black men incorrectly oriented is merely walking on quicksand.
