All of this. This whole situation is so screwed up, but all we ever needed to know about it-- unless were part of the criminal investigation or sitting on a jury-- we already knew. There is no need to subject this woman to even more trauma & potential danger for some people to understand that this is blatantly, horribly, wrong. As a side note, Im pretty sick over the level of violence shared, even in the name of awareness, via the internet recently. Its a scary reflection of just how desensitized weve become, how inured to incredible violence, that this could feel in any way necessary-- and scarier still that there are people among us who still look for reasons to justify such behavior even when visually confronted with this level of depravity. We dont need to see journalists being beheaded to know the perpetrators are horrific people. We shouldnt need to see Ray Rice brutalizing his partner to know he is deeply screwed up and deserves to be held seriously accountable. Frankly, the public shouldnt even need to see video to know that the police were wrong to do what they did to Mike Brown, to Kajime Powell, and to so many others (though the fact that police stories are blatantly contradicted by such video evidence is important, and should be relied upon in investigations and court proceedings). In all of these situations, a description of the facts alone should be enough for us to say, Something is seriously wrong here, and we need to make a change. (And especially in the case of our police, where thousands of people are assaulted and/or killed by US police officers each year yet this is almost *unheard of* in most industrialized countries, that reality alone should be enough to prompt a nationwide overhaul in how police are trained, monitored, and held accountable. We shouldnt even be waiting on video in each case trying to figure out if it was justified, because its simply impossible that this level of officially-sanctioned violence could EVER make any sense.) I hope Janay Rice is safe tonight; statistics & past experience suggest she isnt. And I also hope that we all start really thinking about how we break this cycle of violence. Im thinking about the ways we (myself included) speak, that reinforce the idea that violence can be a solution. And most especially, Im thinking about people who think discipline should ever involve hitting children. There is a reason so many people in our society think violence is an acceptable option for resolving interpersonal conflict, that bigger people should be allowed to physically control smaller people, or that there are verbal or other non-violent behaviors that could ever amount to someone deserving what they got. If our one/two earliest role models, the most trusted people in our lives, endorse that message, what else would we expect?
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 22:38:33 +0000
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