Some of yall have made me sick these past few weeks fam.

I can’t judge, you know, one of my favorite pastimes is disparaging famous people and things – but there are certain things that are appropriate and certain things that are not.

I tried my best to avoid seeing pictures of a battered Rihanna, because I don’t need a reminder of the kind of hurt – physical, mental, emotional – partner abuse can cause. We all know what happens, and most of us would never dream of making fun of it if it was our own family who was involved. Alas, it was everywhere and I saw it tons of times, and I was both shocked and not shocked at all. We all know this happens every single day everywhere around us.

But because it’s two pop stars, people feel like their lives are public enough that they can crack a little joke here and there. And they think because they apparently are a couple again, that it must not have been that bad in the first place, and we can all chuckle about it now that it’s over. And they think she probably did something to provoke him, and that it’s her fault if she gets beat up again or worse, and she gave him an STD, and I even hear little kids saying “Chris Brown beat Rihanna with an umbrella-ella-ella” and yo, I’m just shocked fam, really?

Lost in all this is this simple fact: partner abuse is the leading cause of death for African-American women aged 15-34. Leading cause of death – not simply “more common than we’d like to imagine.”

There’s no joke in there. And regardless if you like Chris Brown’s music better than you like Rihanna’s, there’s no excuse either.

And some folks are like “man, she took him back, you’re overreacting, it couldn’t have been a big deal if she took him back.” But you don’t need me to tell you that it always seems like she takes him back, no matter who “she” and “him” is. Whether it’s celebrities or your neighbors, it’s easier to think of times when they get back together than it is to think of examples when they didn’t. Maybe that’s just me, but no I don’t think it is.

Our society loves to blame the victim. Especially when that victim is a woman, and more so when it is a woman of color. I know celebrities are easy targets for snark and disses, but honestly, I been disgusted by some of yall recently, and I hope we can get to a point in society where nobody feels alright about making light of this kind of situation.

Peace

Tags: violence

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 12:10 PM and is filed under stuff in the newspaper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.