Quote:
Originally Posted by Gizmo
But if you want to say we can't pass judgement on him as a wife-beater (or fiancé beater, I suppose) then so be it. I can acquiesce to that. But then I must ask what your
"And then she married him" line was supposed to be? A dig at her for staying with a guy who mike-tysoned her? A dig at her for being a "gold digger"? What was the point of that statement?
When I point out she married him I am trying to point to the victim's voice which, in a rush to judge RR, has been given scant attention. She has a lot more information about the relationship and she has just dedicated herself to him when, in light of the publicity, it would have been easy for her to leave or at least postpone the wedding pending RR getting treatment. She clearly has a different opinion of her relationship (more later on why this is cast aside) than those calling for the head of RR.
That this clip generated a conversation about domestic abuse is a good thing but I think we would do better to steer the conversation away from it's celebrity culture origin or else the depth of the conversation will be limited. It shouldn't just be about these individuals, about whom we actually know very little.
But why is this presumption a non-issue? Another not-discussed frame of the conversation, alongside celebrity gossip, is black men behaving badly. I'm not saying you personally jump to conclusions out of a reflexive superiority complex. But if you follow the media, especially the sports media, you will find that criticism of black athletes tends to be severely overblown and supercilious on a racial basis. Google sharpie-gate, in which a black athlete pulled out a marker during a football game to sign autographs. This invoked panel discussions about (literally) the cultural degradation of our society.
You said that RR "mike-tysoned her". That is a predictable type of comparison that touches on some of the driving themes of this discourse- celebrity culture and disproportionate castigation of blacks- I have outlined. You are comparing RR to the black athlete whom the media has caricatured into the poster boy for black anti-social behavior. This is ironic because many of those behaviors trace directly back to the abuses of slavery so it's like we are castigated black people for adaptive behavior resulting from abuses we inflicted on them.
There is an excellent film about Tyson called "Tyson" which I encourage people to watch. It's mostly Tyson talking, very candidly answering open ended questions about his quite interesting life. The level of violence and cruelty Tyson was exposed to as a child is eye opening. When you hear Tyson talk about the incidents and happenings in his childhood, holding back tears while at the same time obviously seething with anger so many years later, you will be amazed he didn't turn out worse. Have you (and I mean anyone reading not you personally) ever just sat down and listened to the stories of black people living in entrenched poverty? We all know the hood is bad yeah yeah yeah got it but what about the specific abuses individuals suffer? We all know slavery was bad. We can imagine it "would really suck" or whatever but how often are depictions like those in "12 Years a Slave" actually consumed? Those practices left a legacy of violence.
Cliffs: one can't diagnose a complex abuse dynamic on a minute video clip, one should respect the difference in cultures and add more weight to the judgements of group members in those cultures (in particular the role of violence in AA culture), and the discussion of domestic abuse should be extracted from the frames of celebrity culture and the piling on to black athletes.