In a “Valentine’s Day altercation,” some football player I’ve never heard of was arrested for beating his wife, the mother of his children. Ho-hum. In other news…
Why is it always (Alert: The use of always here is called hyperbole.) black athletes who beat their wives? Does racism drive some of them to knock their women around? Or are the cops just racists?
Do we hear about only black male women-beaters because they’re black? Is there one set of laws for blacks and another for whites? Before you black men jump all over me, if you don’t beat your woman, then I’m not talking about you, so there’s no need to say, “Not all black men beat their wives, La Shawn.”
That is obvious. I want to hear something that’s not.
Update: Before this discussion ventures into silliness, let me say this. I know that white women beat women, too. In fact, at some point or another, men beat women, women beat men, women beat women, men beat men, etc. The point I’m making is that we hear about black men beating women, and men in general beating women more often than the other combinations (except for men beating men). I can’t believe I actually had to say that, but there it is.
Back to my point.
Another Update: Embarrassing.
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Um…Jason Kidd? New Jersey Nets bball player? He smacked his wife around I think, didn’t he? And he’s VERY white.
But since that’s the only one I can come up with I think I just sort of reinforced your point.
Actually, he has some “black” in him.
Maybe she didn’t show enough gratitude for the roses he bought her yesterday?
Seriously, though, I’m about tired of hearing about all these athletes beating up on their wives. Geez…they’re millionaires and they have to do dumb stuff like that.
They should consider themselves blessed. If he was so ticked off he should’ve gone a booked a room at a four-star hotel to cool off. Lord knows he’s got the money.
Jason Kidd is half black hon.
Who cares if a Martian man beats a Venutian woman. It’s still wrong. My question is why do we have to refer to the race of the person involved?
It’s still wrong regardless of who does whatever to who.
Of course it’s still wrong. Look, I’m interested in dealing with people who use common sense. It’s a fact that blacks commit more crime. I think race is relevant, whether we don’t want to talk about it or not. That’s part of the problem. People don’t want to talk about things that make them uncomfortable. I’m just making an observation. It interests me and I decided to blog about it.
Hmmm. Bad statistics. Why are blacks disproptionately represented in the ranks of professional athlete’s? Perhaps being a professional athlete makes one conspicuous enough to get mentioned in the newspapers when you do something newsworthy.
I’d imagine there are other statistical factors at play here. I wonder what percentage of professional athletes that are white are from low income families and what percentage of professional athletes that are black are from low income families. Then I wonder how this compares to national rates of domestic violence. Do the athletes demographically match the national averages?
The same questions could be asked about region of the country.
I just wonder if, since there is a far more limited pool of potential abusers and far more exposure of that pool, that it may cause perceived statistical anomalies where there are none.
Perhaps blacks are genetically superior athletes? Of course they are.
Damn La Shawn, you sure like to go where angels fear to tread…
I’m in one of those moods, Craig.
Oh my! I can’t believe that woman got upset over a cop eating a banana! People who want to find racism will find it it any way that they can.
“Its a fact that blacks commit more crime?” Did I read those words correctly in their proper context?
Where do we get this notion?
Athletes these days… so many have anger issues, and have no idea how to behave. Their peers accept their behaivor. Their superiors do. Their fans do. So long as points go up on that big board.
And of course, they are held up as role-models for our youth. You see it in youth sports, as well, increasingly. The stars get to behave differently.
Part of it seems to human nature… I can’t think of a profession where a performer isn’t cut slack. But these ‘men’ are the phenomenom writ large and taken to the extreme.
And while it may be human nature, isn’t most of societies purpose to pick up the slack when our nature is lacking? And of course, a certain Jewish carpenter.
Advocate,
It’s a per capita thing. Just like there are more whites TOTAL on welfare programs, many people see cuts to them as being targeted at the black community.
The fact that a women got upset over a banna eating cop is proof that racism as protest fodder is hereby & henceforth officialy over.
We came, we saw, we overcame Jim Crow racism. Spread the news. Wooohooo. RIP MLK well done. Yippee-ky-yea.
Lashawn,
Let us talk about male athletes where there is big money and, possibly, steriods. Also, most athletes can go from poor to very rich in a few years. Culture, race, and big dollars! How can you separate in a statistically meaningful way so many variables. Remember, statistical correlation does not mean cause and effect, sometimes a third variable can be unseen. Yes, my computer degree had statistics!
JMB
I might note that the race of Mr. Rolle was not mentioned at all in the news article. Y’all are assuming that he’s black. Now, given the number of white Cornerbacks in the NFL, that’s probably a pretty fair assumption. Or do we just go around assuming that everybody with an oddly spelled first name is black?
In this case, it isn’t race, it’s celebrity. In our celeb addicted culture, everything a celeb does is news. Had Mr. Rolle been a third shift stocker at Wal Mart this wouldn’t have made the papers. We wouldn’t be discussing it because we wouldn’t know about it.
My career as a rural LEO tells me that race is a very poor predictor of domestic violence. Alcohol and/or drug abuse and a record of violent criminal behavior are much more reliable predictors.
Druggies, drunks and trash beat up on their spouses. That crowd is comprised of all races.
Actually women attacking men is big news in the past few years here in Cleveland. Of course all the men have been famous! A black female attacks her black football player boyfriend with a knife. I think some substance abuse was involved there. A white MLB pitcher is injured by his white B-movie actress wife when she digs her stiletto heel into his foot. And a famous, beloved and older (like 60’s at the youngest) white weatherman makes headlines when his white wife smacks him around. Gotta love livin’ in Cleveland!
Oooh, this is a toughie. I think that there are far too many contributing factors at play to get into any depth here, but I can hit on a few:
First, boys learn from the male role models in their lives. If a young boy sees his dad/stepdad mistreating his mother, he’s going to internalize that. My (unprofessional) guess is that such a kid will probably go to one extreme or the other: he’ll become an abuser himself, or he won’t hit a woman even if she comes at him first. Is that type of violence more typical in black families? Not being black (but growing up in a house where my dad beat my mom; how ironic is *that*?), I can’t say.
Second, professional athletes are typically little more than spoiled kids in very large, medically-enhanced bodies. They’re accustomed to using violence in their work on the playing field (if one can call it work to play a game for six months out of the year), and so it’s not that big a stretch to take that violence into real life as well. In my opinion, this is probably the biggest contributing factor, and given that blacks are disproportionately represented in professional sports, it makes sense that they’d get more press.
There’s a whole sociological study in this question, and I could go on, but I don’t want to co-opt your blog.
Ouch, Barb M, you had to go and remind me of an ex-girlfriend and the time her stiletto heel meet my toes.
Pete: I live in Tennessee, and I watch every Titans game. La Shawn is correct; Samari Rolle is black.
There are 32 NFL teams and they have 22 starters each, plus a punter and kicker (24). They each probably have 8 backups who are used regularly, that makes about 32 players per team who are “well known” to fans. That’s more than 1000 men. There would be something wrong with statistics if a few of them weren’t wife beaters.
It’s just the human condition, free will is a two-edged sword. People have been bad to each other since Cain and Abel. I don’t see anything in prophecy or the news pointing to moral progress. The Holy Spirit is our hope for moral or “righteous” behavior (!), but we understand that not everyone accepts that spirit.
P. S. I am not a secular humanist
hmmm… Native Chamorro men from Guam have a strange way of saying, “I love you”, to their women. They abuse them, physically, mentally, emotionally, thinking it is their god-given right to do so. But god forbid if ANYONE else tries to hurt them in any way. I can’t say for certain that the Chamorro male’s genetic code is closely linked to Spanish males, but I suspect there’s something there to warrant a full study. LVX,
From your “Another Update”: “Well, it seems that in the context of the march, she took the officer’s banana eating to imply an analogous racial slur relating black people to apes.”
It’s now officially gotten ‘Stupid’ out there. The Officer is not eating it in a lewd or obscene manner…just eating it to get some potassium since they’ve been on their feet all day, and it was provided by the city. That woman’s very existence on this planet is starting to offend me.
What bothers me about the banana situation is that the Mayor actually apologized to this woman, to the point of sending it in writing to her, rather than simply setting her straight and pointing out the utter foolishness of her accusation.
In so far as Black men beating/hitting their women, I may be biased, but I think in many cases it is a two way street. I also agree with Kathleen in that the parental upbringing is a huge factor in how men treat women as adults and vice versa. It would be interesting to find out the details of the case. I wouldn’t be surprised if the violence was mutual.
It is interesting the double standard on abuse and how we (men) are ALWAYS guilty. I was in a situation like this once, where the (psycho) woman I was living with started (in a drunken rage, as I was ejecting her from my house for being DWI with my car) throwing punches and I absolutely knew that if I did anything other than dial 911, I would be the one behind bars. You don’t want to know how much crap I got for “tattling to the cops”!
As often as not, many of the men arrested for partner abuse have been slapped, kicked, punched, spat on, stabbed, or even shot at by their female partner and have merely responded in kind. Now I am absolutely not saying that there are not abusive guys out there who get off on beating women. There are. There are also as many women who get off on assaulting men as well.
A while back my wife and I took one of our freind’s spouse to the hospital for stitches in her head. This was after listening to her attacking him both verbally and physically for over an our because she had convinced herself that he was unfaithful (with absolutely no evidence other than she couldn’t get him on the phone to check up on him for a period of 2 hours when he was at work). He finally lost it and shoved her off and she tripped over their 3 year-old (who was trying to stop them fighting), hitting her head on a windowsill. Being slapped and punched for that long would have driven me over the edge, too. Thankfully, they are getting along much better now and they just yell a lot but she doesn’t hit him near as much. Still…
Who is the guilty party? I’m sure NOW and I do not share the same opinion. No one should have to deal with being abused. It won’t get any better on a large scale until we make everyone aware that anyone can abuse and any abuse is wrong.
I suspect that culturally, among some black communities, beating a wife or women is more acceptable than it is elsewhere in the country. That’s just a guess, but I suspect it is true.
Athletes tend to be physical, and often express their emotions physically (as opposed to verbally). I think it’s just part of being a jock.
I disagree with that Christopher Taylor, I think it is the other way around. Maybe years ago it was true, that hitting your “woman” was acceptable in male circles, but currently, I believe the spirit of the times have changed and you have a complete role reversal occurring especially within the confines of marriage. Women are comparatively more aggressive now than what has been witnessed and/or perceived before. Even sociological and psychological studies have shown this to be true.
For a simple example of this new aggression among women and their acceptance of violence against men, just watch television or a movie and you will see it acted out regularly, ofcourse usually within the context of comedy. Yet, you also see it in many action dramas, this Femme Fetale image that is able to physically thwart several men all at once without smearing her make-up. This by no means is a cause of violence, yet is a good indicator of the mindset of our culture.
I was halfway through the ‘banana’ story before I realized what this woman’s beef was. I had assumed it was of a sexual nature. Does that get me off the ‘racist’ list or just make me a perv?
Yikes!
It’s not just black men. Mexicans beat their women as well. But then, nobody pays attention to us spicks.
I lived in Houston when Warren Moon almost choked his wife to death. Their kids, witnessing this, called 911. I can’t see him now without the image of what that must have been like popping into my mind.
Another interesting point in addition to La Shawn’s question is the forgiveness factor shown to athletes and entertainers. Moon is still given a commentator contract. Darryl Strawberry and Steve Howe are continually let off the hook and allowed back to the big leagues. Etc. etc. etc. Meanwhile a boneheaded pitcher makes a stupid comment about New Yorkers, gays, and other groups and is required to undergo psychiatric hearings. After all the fuss is splashed in the papers, his ability suffers and he’s all but run out of the league.
Attempt to murder someone…that’s OK. Make a racist or homophobic joke, your career is over. Oversimplifying and using hyperbole as much as La Shawn, I know, but that’s increasingly what it seems like.
Ummm Jose’, I think I disagree with you. Maybe its this way with Mexican women, but I’ve dated a couple of Puerto Rican ladies and both my present(#2) and my first wife are from the Philippines (I have a thing for short, spicy women with dark hair dark eyes, okay!)and and there is definitely one thing I am absolutely sure of: it would have cost me my life to lay a hand on any of them. Remember Lorena Bobbitt??!!
One of my best friends is married to a Columbian lady and she has anger management issues especially when it comes to jealosy. She’s only 5′2″ tall but she was a semipro kick-boxer back home and we’ve seen what he looked like after she got in a bad mood at him. Eventually we got the bleeding stopped. Nice, huh? She always wonders why she couldn’t find any Columbian guys who were interested in her. She is pretty cute, scary, but cute.
I’m sure there are submissive Latina’s out there but I suspect they are in the minority.
Samari & Danisha?
Could you find me another non-black couple with these names? Can you find me another black couple with these names?
This wasn’t that much of a push here. La Shawn isn’t either.
Since when do we have to pretend to know nothing of the world, have the IQ of 90 and the imagination of a dry toast?
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