The perpetually wrong Keith Josef Adkins:
I said this last week and I’ll say it again: women and others should be trying to school other women about domestic abuse. We spend way too much time hanging men in trees; but where’s the urgent advocacy to educate women? You know, to point out their patterns in this abuse game? To shake them out of the victim daze and put them into action toward recovery? The media and others should have been using this time to open that wound called “Women in Abuse” instead of throwing hate darts at Chris Brown 24-7. But nobody’s interested in that. Cut to: Rihanna and her boy Chris schmoozing it up at Sean Combs’ mansion by the sea.
Does anyone have a clue what your boy is talking about? Because a quick Google search would bring up article after article and blog post after blog post trying to make this whole sad affair a teachable moment on domestic violence.
I wasn’t gonna get into the “hanging men in trees”/”throwing hate darts” bit, but I stumbled upon this quote over at Racialicious from Tricia Rose.
The pressure young black women feel to defend black men against racist attacks, even at their own expense, is a new variation on the centuries old standard for black women’s race loyalty. This community wide standard – which asks women to take the hit (metaphorically and literally), to be content with dynamics in which they sacrifice themselves and care for others’ interests over their own – mimics the terms of an abusive relationship. As bell hooks has pointedly reminded us, although we should avoid demonizing black males “[b]lack females must not be duped into supporting shit that hurts us under the guise of standing beside our men. If black men are betraying us through acts of male violence, we save ourselves and the race by resisting.”
Say word.
