Black Women, Violence, Or Why is Our Pain Funny to You?

Black Women, Violence, Or Why is Our Pain Funny to You?

So I asked this question on Twitter, but then I realized I wanted to ask it here too. As all the discussions circulate about domestic violence blackface at Waverly & the bus driver in Cleveland who decided to punch a belligerent female passenger at what point do we talk about why so many are quick to laugh about violence against black women? When do we talk about domestic violence stats in the black community & how often violence against black women is encouraged and supported by the mainstream narrative that black women are strong and can’t be hurt?

I’m totally willing to have a discussion about racialized misogyny, and what it means to say that WOC can never be victimized, but I’m not sure we’re ready to have it. Because it would mean talking about sexual abuse of black women before the age of 18, and intimate partner violence like black women are human. And so far I’m not seeing too many people willing to recognize our humanity, much less our vulnerability to violence. So when can we start the conversation, and how long before it is about the health and safety of black women, and not just another discourse on how we need to support black men?

Black Women, Violence, Or Why is Our Pain Funny to You? -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

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14 Responses to Black Women, Violence, Or Why is Our Pain Funny to You?

  1. 1
    Sebastian says:

    Of all the examples of violence in the world, you had to come up with one in which the ‘victim’ attempted to cheat the ‘aggressor’, then insulted him, then grabbed his throat (a person of average strength can crush a trachea) and spat in his face. These are documented facts that no witness disputes.

    Violence against women, indeed. Talk about reinforcing the stereotype that women cannot hurt men, and that female on male violence is to be ignored.

  2. 2
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    how often violence against black women is encouraged and supported by the mainstream narrative that black women are strong and can’t be hurt?

    Black women appear to be assigned some characteristics which society traditionally assigns to the male gender (strength, aggression, power) and it may be that increased violence is partially the result of that. This IS NOT a PHMT attempt, really, but my understanding is that the level violence against black men is very high: it may be that assigning those characteristics to black women has the unwanted effect of exposing them to certain types of violence that society used to target more towards black men, without a commensurate reduction in targeting for crimes against women.

    IOW: in “traditional” society a man might beat a women with a switch but wouldn’t engage in a duel with her, while he might duel with a man but not beat him with a switch. People who break gender roles tend to get the worst of both: a woman who breaks those roles will still get beaten but will also get shot; a man who breaks those roles will still get shot but will also get beaten.

  3. 3
    Copyleft says:

    Agreed. Domestic violence is only funny when it happens to men, because they probably deserved it somehow. (obvious sarcasm)

  4. 4
    Jeremy Redlien says:

    Speaking of media/cultural narratives, how odd is is that I just saw The Color Purple the other day and couldn’t help but feel as if Spielberg had managed to successfully romanticize the issue of domestic violence. Specifically, the issue of domestic violence against black woman.

    Anybody up for a discussion about that movie?
    -Jeremy

  5. 5
    Grace Annam says:

    Copyleft:

    Agreed. Domestic violence is only funny when it happens to men, because they probably deserved it somehow. (obvious sarcasm)

    Wow, that was quick. From talking explicitly and specifically about black women to centering the plight of men in three comments. Copyleft, would you care to comment on the actual topic which karnythia wrote about?

    But even that was not as blatant as this:

    Jeremy Redlien:

    Anybody up for a discussion about that movie?

    If anyone is, it better happen in an open thread or over at Jeremy’s blog, because that’s not what this thread is about.

    Jeremy, this is not your thread. It is karnythia’s thread. And until she says it’s okay to talk about your topic, please talk about her topic, or don’t talk.

    I am a moderator here. Unless karnythia or a senior moderator says otherwise, kindly follow this guidance. Thank you.

    Grace

  6. 6
    Doug S. says:

    Sadly, laughing at other people’s pain is, essentially, the entire basis of comedy.

    Anyway, I shouldn’t be one to talk. I was laughing at 9/11 jokes less than one month after the planes hit.

  7. 7
    Jeremy Redlien says:

    Jeremy Redlien:

    Anybody up for a discussion about that movie?

    If anyone is, it better happen in an open thread or over at Jeremy’s blog, because that’s not what this thread is about.

    Jeremy, this is not your thread. It is karnythia’s thread. And until she says it’s okay to talk about your topic, please talk about her topic, or don’t talk.

    I am a moderator here. Unless karnythia or a senior moderator says otherwise, kindly follow this guidance. Thank you.

    Grace Annam,

    My apologies, it was not my intent to derail the thread.

    I am also not sure how wanting to talk about The Color Purple was off topic under the circumstances given that the film was about domestic violence against black women and I thought this was a thread about the ways in which the media minimized the violence against black woman. And I thought The Color Purple did so by romanticizing it.

    -Jeremy

  8. 8
    Elusis says:

    I think when it comes to black women, there is an overlap between class and race issues that allows white people to other and dehumanize them, making their pain “funny.” This excerpt from a documentary on class and TV made me think of Karnythia’s question when a student showed it in class yesterday. But I also think that images from minstrelsy and “coon shows” is still pretty pervasive in the collective national unconscious – rolling eyes in black faces showing exaggerated emotions – and that feeds the love of public spectacle involving black people. (Trigger warning: sexist and racist imagery from Maury Povitch shows involving paternity testing.)

    Rhianna doesn’t fit the class portion of the issue, but DV is still seen as something only “lowlifes” and “white trash” and “ghetto” people do, so I wonder if by “getting herself hit,” (sarcasm heavily intended there) Rhianna was re-coded as a lower-class person, from which her other identities as a woman and a POC make her further vulnerable to being mocked and stereotyped.

  9. 9
    Eva says:

    Thanks Elusis.

  10. 10
    Slim Charles says:

    Both of the actors in this incident behaved deplorably, but it takes quite a bit of mental gymnastics to frame the young woman as the “victim” and the bus driver as the “perp”. The majority of discussions I’ve seen online conveniently ignore the fact that the woman attempted to board the bus without paying her fare, then got verbally abusive with the bus driver when he objected to that plan, then spit in his face, then assaulted him physically. Given these facts (which are not in dispute, by the way), I have a hard time seeing her as a victim. She started a fight with a stranger, and the stranger fought back. If the bus driver were a woman and the passenger a man, how would that impact the narrative of this story? If a man spit in a woman’s face and put his hands around her neck, do you think there would be many people rushing to his defense as a “victim”?

  11. 11
    closetpuritan says:

    Of all the examples of violence in the world, you had to come up with one in which the ‘victim’ attempted to cheat the ‘aggressor’, then insulted him, then grabbed his throat (a person of average strength can crush a trachea) and spat in his face. These are documented facts that no witness disputes.

    Well, they were described in the police report, according to Karnythia’s original link. The video at the top of the Huffington Post piece shows the driver getting up and walking over to the woman and punching her, though. If he had been doing that to get her to stop spitting on him or choking him, I would say it was justifiable self-defense. (Refusing to pay for bus fare and insulting him do NOT justify assault.) At best, he decided to punch her after she had already backed off physically (in which case I think punching her is not OK), and I’m dubious about whether she actually choked or spat on the driver at all.

    Sebastian, can you back up your statement? I’d be interested to know if the report of her spitting and choking is substantiated or denied by any witnesses besides the woman and the bus driver. The HuffPost piece also mentions a video on YouTube that’s been removed–did that show her choking or spitting on the driver?

  12. 12
    closetpuritan says:

    Hm, there’s a link on the HuffPost page that I didn’t notice at first, that goes here. There are two videos. In the first one, I couldn’t really see any physical contact until the driver punched the woman, but it the second one it looked like she could have been briefly touching his neck. The description on the Cleveland.com website says that “Both videos show the woman yelling at the driver and then apparently striking him before the driver eventually leaves his seat and punches the woman in the face before tossing her from the stopped bus.” The first video does show them appearing to be grabbing each other’s neck after the punch was thrown. I grabbed a screenshot where he’s clearly grabbing her neck and I think she’s grabbing his neck or shoulders. She could have been spitting on him during that scuffle. It doesn’t look like she was near him long enough during the “apparently striking” bit to spit on him then, but it’s possible.

    After seeing the full video, I would label the driver’s actions as “excessive use of force”. The driver definitely escalated things by walking over to her and punching her after she had moved back. Anyone else have any observations on the videos? Or is getting into the details this much getting too off-topic?

  13. 13
    Karnythia says:

    One of the things that struck me (and is in fact why I mentioned the incident) is that he’s clearly contributing to the verbal altercation in a way that escalated the situation. She’s tipsy at best (I believe she’s admitted to being drunk), & clearly not in full command of herself. The driver on the other is sober, capable of calling the police, and is in fact required to do just that. Yet rather than avail himself of the resources available, or even use his greater size & strength to restrain her and remove her from the bus, he deliberately punched her. And apparently felt fairly comfortable doing so given his reaction after the fact to the other passengers. The internet’s support of him and willingness to place all of the blame on her (there’s even a petition to get him his job back despite the fact that he violated the rules of his own employer), is IMO a prime example of my point.

  14. 14
    closetpuritan says:

    I have to admit that I watched the videos with the sound off. I was thinking at the time that I just didn’t want to listen to people yelling at each other, and whatever they were yelling couldn’t be a good reason for hitting each other… and then realized afterward that the words might have provided clues to what was going on where I was having trouble seeing. It sounds like he may have been looking forward to a fight.