A Black Woman’s Attack Is Not My Business
At least according to the majority…
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Black women often say that we’re not safe or protected in society.
This is often seen as whining or an attack on Black men who we supposedly believe are obligated to protect us.
It’s neither.
It’s a statement.
More aptly it’s a fact.
I know many Black women who have stories of being publicly slapped, dragged by their hair out of places, beaten, or otherwise physically assaulted (usually by men) while nobody comes to their aid.
Believe it or not, these women are not looking for Superman to come and beat their assailant (who they probably know) halfway to death while they stand back and watch with a smile on their face.
When they recount their stories, what bothers these women the most is that nobody cared. Or that they could have been killed, and nobody came to their aid.
We recently saw this when a Black woman was attacked by a Black man in a takeout restaurant in Chicago while everyone in that building sat back and did nothing. This ended with her teenage son getting a gun from her car and fatally shooting her attacker.
Onlookers then lied about the Black woman starting the altercation and commanding her son to murder a “helpless” man — commanding him to shoot the man some more while he was already dying. This ended with the mother and son getting arrested on the scene and released when video evidence did not match the bystander’s statements.
I haven’t been following the story of Rho Bashe because I no longer have social media.
However, I do want to start off by saying that hitting someone in the head with a brick is attempted murder.
It is.
Rho Bashe could have been killed that day with dozens of onlookers watching and people inevitably blaming her for her own death.
There has been a ton of discourse of why nobody, specifically Black men, came to Rho’s defense when a Black man smashed her in the face with a brick.
Make no mistake about it — Rho’s assailant felt safe hitting her in the face with a brick because he knows like everyone else that Black women are not protected.
In fact, let’s remove race and gender. Watching the attempted murder of someone should elicit a reaction from a crowd of people.
People around should use their words to deescalate the situation or stop the attacker. Do it with your hands in the air. You don’t have to run in and put yourself in harm’s way to stop a person who is physically assaulting another unarmed person.
Bring gender and race into it and it looks even funnier in the light, because to add insult to injury, there will be misogynoir, people who seem happy and even gloat to see a Black woman hit in the face with a brick. There will be victim blaming, character assassination of the victim, and thousands of Black men coming together to tell you what you may be more comfortable denying — the assault or attempted murder of a Black woman in public is not their business. They’ve already made up their minds that they are not coming to a Black woman’s defense.
I abhor violence.
But I’m also not going to watch any unarmed person be physically assaulted, possibly killed, while I sit back and do nothing.
I’m more than likely not going to intervene physically but I’m not going to mind my own business either.
When a Black man was choked to death on a subway by a white man, Black people could collectively agree, across gender lines, that the murder of this Black man in broad daylight by a white man, while people looked on, was wrong.
Mind you these were two men so at least it could have been a fair fight. The Black man who was murdered also had a history of terrorizing subway riders. Yet, Black men and women could agree that him being choked out in broad daylight in front of witnesses just wasn’t right. Being mentally ill also made him vulnerable.
A Black woman does not get the same response from the public or grace.
And make no mistake about it, a Black man hitting a Black woman in the face with a BRICK just isn’t right.
Furthermore, people do intervene and play Good Samaritan in dangerous situations all the time. Sometimes out of instinct. Sometimes out of a sense of duty.
People stop and tackle armed gunmen, who have the mission to shoot everyone in sight, so their chances of being shot and killed are high.
People also risk their lives to save strangers — people they don’t know from a hole in the wall — all the time. People legitimately risk their lives when accidents, natural disasters, fires, or suicide attempts, like when people jump into bodies of water, occur.
I wish I could find the episode of John Quiñones What Would You Do? that depicts how a Black woman being physically assaulted in public doesn’t elicit a response from men of any races. In fact, one white man told the Black assailant to “handle” the Black woman in private next time. This was not the case when the races were switched and a white woman was depicted being physically assaulted. In fact, it was overwhelmingly other women of all races who were the most likely to come to the aid of the Black woman being abused.
From slavery on down to present day, the “delicacy” of Black women is seen as nonexistent.
For many, the assault of Black woman is not seen the same way as the assault of other women.
I’ve seen videos of Black women attacked by white men for trying to exit parking spaces, Black women attacked by Asian men for complaining about their manicure, and Black women attacked by Black men, like in the case of Rho Bashe, for declining their advances.
A common denominator is that no one comes to the Black woman’s aid.
Look at this white woman screaming racial slurs and attacking everyone in sight. She remains unscathed for the most part.
Language and violence trigger warning.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UkU2F0J8XZI&pp=ygUkRHJ1bmsgd2hpdGUgd29tYW4gZmlnaHRpbmcgZXZlcnlib2R5
There are more videos of this phenomena, white women physically starting altercations and getting away with it.
After the Montgomery Riverboat Brawl, many complained that a violent white woman who jumped in and eventually got smacked on top of her head with a folding chair (which was not going to kill her) was the low point of the brawl or taking it too far.
Cause you know…she’s a woman.
Yet, many do not hesitate to lay hands on Black women.
The lack of response to Rho has everything to do with her race and gender.
Black women know the truth.
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