Chris Brown and Rihanna

March 5, 2009 by Melissa Harris-Lacewell
Filed under: Podcasts, Soul/R&B, SoulSites, SoulTrackin' 

Yolanda,

I tried not to write about this topic. We like to cover a lot of ground at The Kitchen Table: race, gender, religion, and politics, but we are not a comprehensive blog like some of our other favorites, especially the incomparable Jack and Jill Politics .
I have tried to leave the Chris Brown and Rihanna story alone. I did not want to drag us into the land of celebrity gossip and speculation about famous folks and their motivations, but today I just felt the need to break TKT silence about this matter.
I admit to following the story every day for weeks since it happened. My guilty blog pleasure is Bossip and they have been all over this story since the beginning. They posted these official photographs of Rihanna’s cut and swollen face. They have mocked and critiqued Chris Brown every day and repeatedly asked why in the world Rihanna has chosen to reconcile with her abuser. I’ve even cringed and almost cried when reading the comments section on Bossip where dozens of readers have expressed the belief that women “need” “deserve” and “like” to be beaten and abused.
I was reading about it, but I didn’t want to write about it.
I have been getting dozens of emails and inquiries about the story. I even had a Facebook friend write to me and say that as a good guy with a good education, good job, and kind disposition, Rihanna’s preference for an abusive relationship felt like a personal betrayal. My friend reported that he and other “good guys” wondered why they were still single in a world where so many young black women are in relationships with abusive, cruel, and unfaithful men.
Many have urged us to take this story up at TKT, but I didn’t want to write about it.
I am raising a young daughter who, like many other first graders, absolutely loved the “Umbrella” song last summer. She thinks Rihanna is pretty and cool. She definitely can’t compete with the Beyonce worship that goes on in my house, but Rihanna is certainly someone Parker can name and identify as a singer, dancer, and public figure. So I have shielded Parker from the story completely. I do not want to have to answer questions about why a boyfriend would beat and bite his girlfriend and why she would decide to keep him as her boyfriend. I know that I will have to talk with Parker about all of these issues, but as the child of divorce I am terrified that I will make her a scared and bitter girl before she’s even in the second grade!
I am raising girl, but I didn’t want to write about it.
I am a feminist. I teach courses on black women’s politics. We discuss issues of rape, sexual violence and domestic violence. I have written about black men’s sexual violence perpetrated against black women. In class I screen the film NO! The Rape Documentary by courageous sister filmmaker Aishah Simmons. I assign Kimberle Crenshaw’s Mapping the Margins, which so brilliantly explains the legal and social implications of the intersections between race, gender, and intimate violence.
I am a feminist, but I didn’t want to write about it.
I really didn’t want to put this brutalized young woman on The Kitchen Table because it hurts. It hurts to look at her face. It hurts to think about the devastating choices she is making as she clings to this relationship.

It hurts because my elementary school friend was brutally murdered as a young woman by her abusive ex-boyfriend.

It hurts because another childhood friend recently dropped off Facebook because a man was using it to stalk her.

It hurts because in just a decade Parker will enter the world of dating and therefore the world of this violence and I will have to find new ways to empower and protect her. The thought terrifies me.

It hurts because I have had women students sit across from me during office hours with dark glasses on a dark fall afternoon and refuse to take them off.

It hurts because one of my sisters was held captive at gunpoint by an obsessive and abusive boyfriend.

It hurts because I still remember hands that once held and loved me wrapped around my own neck with brutality.

It hurts because I know that most of our readers have these stories too.

These days the Obamas have lulled many of us into a wistful and comfortable sense that all is well with black love. I love to watch our hand holding, love- dovey, gentle-teasing first couple, but they make it easy to imagine that patriarchy, violence, and abuse are fully resolved issues. Intimate violence is still real and still reaping a whirlwind of terror in black women’s lives.
March is Women’s History Month and there is no historical thread more consistently visible in tapestry of women’s lives than violence.
I know I am copping out a little by not providing a deep feminist, political analysis of the multiple issues involved and evoked by this celebrity drama, but I am having a very hard time writing about this issue. Instead of analyzing I am just admitting that it is hard, that it hurts, and that I am exhausted and angry that black women must watch a young sister be beaten. I am pissed that other men are brokering the mending of this relationship (P. Diddy apparently had the couple in his home to talk and reconcile). And I am devastated that Rihanna’s soul and spirit are so broken that she is returning to her abuser.
Melissa

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