Ah, it wasn’t that long ago that MSNBC’s Toure got in some deep muckety-muck for using the words “The power of whiteness,” in response to a transgender “Jewish” female who said that her ancestors survived the Holocaust, came to America with “nothing” and “made it.” [Not.]
Now we have ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, suspended for a week on Tuesday for comments he made that suggested women should avoid provoking men into assaulting them. Think about those words carefully “provoking men into assaulting them,” because he said nothing about men who provoke women into provoking them.
The character, texture and flavor of those words provide a nasty and vicious open door for every man who thought he was well-justified in hitting a woman just because she “provoked” him — never mind that his suggestion of assault didn’t come about as a result of self-defense, but only of a man feeling like she PROVOKED it, which circumstantially blames her for his own behavior.
I’m nearly certain that nearly every BLACK man in America fell in line with that ill-conceived choice of words, as many of them have likely had vivid memories of assaulting or seeing a Black woman assaulted who had “provoked” some man, be it her brother, nephew, a male cousin, her dad, husband, or even her boyfriend or her own SON into assaulting her.
Let’s make a clear distinguishing factor about the difference between “provoke” and “assault,” because be it man on woman or woman on man, or any other kind of hand-to-whatever combat, “provoking” someone INTO ASSAULT is pretty much a demonologist’s lie from the pits of hell.
Anyone, if they are not in actual self-defense mode, have no business “assaulting” anyone else, even if and WHEN provoked.
Let’s make it perfectly clear – when white women across America went into High Alert because of that comment – I’m sure they were looking at other WHITE women who were assaulted by a man on provocation, because most of us can be as close to certain as possible that they did not go into defense mode on Stephen A. about BLACK WOMEN being assaulted. This nation’s history has proven that they all could care less about that.
For us, this whole thing plays into that “angry Black woman” syndrome, as if there was never such a thing as an angry white one. And that means, for the most part, that Stephen A. openhandedly gave BLACK MEN backdoor permission to assault BLACK WOMEN in the event that a BLACK WOMAN provokes him.
Again, maybe it was the way he put it that was wrong -and even Whoopi Goldberg herself said that everyone “ought to just keep their hands to themselves”- but the problem is that most of the time, it’s more than just “hands” that are involved in assaulting someone.
If we want to justify assaulting a woman -any woman- just because SHE provoked HIM, then the converse of that is, SHE is justified for assaulting HIM for provoking her. Now, most of the time, but not in all cases, Black women, just women in general, are not physically capable of assaulting a man who provokes her and winning the fight in the end, so the only “assaulting” she is going to be able to do is with a lethal weapon – and the first blow better be the final one.
Marissa Alexander, convicted as a Black woman of trying to Defend herself and her children from an abuser
Marissa Alexander got 20 years in prison and is coming up for a review and retrial of her case soon, because, according to the legal documents I was able to find, not only had her husband abused her for years before the inciting incident that led to her firing a warning shot to get him up off her, but he even admitted in those public documents that it was not the first time he had abused her, and he seemed to slickly assert that he would do it again, if need be.
Right there, you know that white women, white men, and Black men have formed some sinister netherworld alliance to raise up against Black women and justify any attack or assault on her person, raising the question about her right to even be angry like any other human being would be.
The Very Foundation of the World shakes under that sinister alliance, simply because every human being on the planet thinks its Mother is the most convenient and available victim to lash out at for any reason in the world, and damn her if she rises up to strike back in her own defense — even when they’ve sucked at her teats to sustain their own lives, and drained her of every bit of her own being and substance in the process.
Yet, because of that “angry Black woman” syndrome that white America, AND BLACK MEN, so easily use against Black women while they simultaneously shed tears over white women who got their arsses righteously kicked just because they “provoked” some man, we begin to see through to the clear broth of this smoky steamy mixed soup that Stephen A. got himself into.
Black men, while you’re busy applauding Stephen A. and getting riled up about his suspension, don’t forget – he was talking about your daughters, too. If she so much as says something a man doesn’t like, and “provokes him to wrath,” then she should be assaulted for it, at-will.
That’s what got Trayvon Martin killed after provoking George Zimmerman while “walking Black in white-unapproved clothing” through his own neighborhood in the rain trying to get home to his dad’s house to watch a football game, and whatever else he was planning on doing and never got to do.
If you say it’s okay to assault a woman as provoked into it, then what you just did was sign Trayvon Martin’s and Emmitt Till’s death warrants; and justified the provoked/unprovoked lynchings of every Black man and woman in America, even at the hands of one another.
That kind of justification explains a lot about why we self-implode in New Orleans, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and all across America in every nook and cranny, because we’ve rubber-stamped and co-signed the abuse of one another even over so much as a provocation, which could be anything – from a word (or a hot loud string of words) shouted out in haste of anger, to simply being somewhere you shouldn’t be when you shouldn’t be there.
That alone certainly explains why Sam Cooke “got what was coming to him” after Hacienda Motel manager Bertha Cook shot him down in cold blood, or so the story goes. After all, she was provoked.
Just like “Everyone Welcome” meant “Blacks Welcome” in the 1960s, we all know dammed well that Stephen A. was not talking about WHITE women who provoke men when he said “women.” It is 2014.
One can only guess that this is the reason so many Black women end up being caught in the middle of everyone’s crosshairs and end up becoming bigger feminists –when it comes to opposing Black men– than a white woman ever had to be just to get some right to work that we already had from birth.
I can honestly say, as a Black woman who has been the victim of those allegedly “provoked” assaults, that rubber-stamping of the abuse of Black women is not allowed on mine, or any other Black women’s watch. This is about the time when every Black woman in America ought to be on High Assault Alert, and do the NRA and their Second Amendment rights a big favor simply because everyone knows that we love to give credit where credit is due.
That kind of stuff, right there. Uh huh.
Where there was once unity, now there is strife. Click this, I dare you. “We got something for THAT arss.”
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