Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
'In 2014, violence against black women is seen as nothing more than a joke."
Halloween always reminds me that there are things far scarier than ghosts and goblins, things like racism and misogyny that persist when the costumes are packed away and November 1st rolls around.
ICYMI, yesterday more photos surfaced of couples costumed as Janay and Ray Rice for Halloween, complete with blackface and bruises. Still others — including a white child, also in blackface — dragged blow-up dolls behind them. The hashtags that appeared alongside the photos on Twitter and Instagram? #hilarious #BestCostume #funny #lmfao #hitabitch #shewasknockedupnowshesknockedout and, inexplicably, #domesticviolenceisnotfunny #butmycostumewas.
The message couldn’t be clearer: in 2014, violence against black women is seen as nothing more than a joke. As Wagatwe summed up on Twitter, “Yet another reminder of how black women are not seen as humans, but props (see: black blowup doll) and our pain & trauma as punchlines.” As Janay Rice herself said, “It’s sad, that my suffering amuses others.” . . .
Still others suggested that, while they don’t think domestic violence is funny, Janay Rice’s failure to condemn her husband or leave him or pursue a criminal case against him (or any of a dozen other things people who are not Janay Rice feel Janay Rice should have done) meant that she essentially got what she was asking for (e.g., “mocking the situation is wrong. but she is defending him and what he did. that is wrong”). So, since some confusion seems to remain, let me be clear: It is not a victim’s responsibility to condemn her partner. It is not her job to be a “model victim.” It is not okay for people who are not Janay Rice (or Rihanna, or any of the other famous black domestic violence survivors we seem to hold to a higher standard of “perfect victimhood” than anyone else) to insist that she be a role model to other young women who may become victims of violence.
ICYMI, yesterday more photos surfaced of couples costumed as Janay and Ray Rice for Halloween, complete with blackface and bruises. Still others — including a white child, also in blackface — dragged blow-up dolls behind them. The hashtags that appeared alongside the photos on Twitter and Instagram? #hilarious #BestCostume #funny #lmfao #hitabitch #shewasknockedupnowshesknockedout and, inexplicably, #domesticviolenceisnotfunny #butmycostumewas.
The message couldn’t be clearer: in 2014, violence against black women is seen as nothing more than a joke. As Wagatwe summed up on Twitter, “Yet another reminder of how black women are not seen as humans, but props (see: black blowup doll) and our pain & trauma as punchlines.” As Janay Rice herself said, “It’s sad, that my suffering amuses others.” . . .
Still others suggested that, while they don’t think domestic violence is funny, Janay Rice’s failure to condemn her husband or leave him or pursue a criminal case against him (or any of a dozen other things people who are not Janay Rice feel Janay Rice should have done) meant that she essentially got what she was asking for (e.g., “mocking the situation is wrong. but she is defending him and what he did. that is wrong”). So, since some confusion seems to remain, let me be clear: It is not a victim’s responsibility to condemn her partner. It is not her job to be a “model victim.” It is not okay for people who are not Janay Rice (or Rihanna, or any of the other famous black domestic violence survivors we seem to hold to a higher standard of “perfect victimhood” than anyone else) to insist that she be a role model to other young women who may become victims of violence.
http://feministing.com/2014/10/27/ray-rice-halloween-costumes-are-not-funny/
12 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
As if that would do any good, though. There has always been this element in American society, heck, world culture, but one may have hoped people had become more sane instead of the other way around.
I was taught in school about the KKK, cross burnings, Jim Crow, sharecroppers, lynching and naturally with slavery, what the fate of black women were in that system. I always felt them to be the most abused of all on a visceral level that enraged me as teenager. It's frowned upon, but there was a long time I felt that rape should be a capital offense, but we are told it is no big deal, like this will be excused as freedom of speech, a joke like Rush makes.
Just a joke, to degrade a person sexually or lie about them, why don't you just lighten up and have a sense of humor? Really, no harm, no foul, move along.
I also felt sick going over the threads on this and seeing what was said on line elsewhere. I felt it was not just saying she was not human, but neither was he, and in the background of the media coverage was the message:
'Blacks all act like brutes and so they should have no power. See, this proves how nasty they are.'
But anyone who has seen or read of Justin Bieber's behavior, or the Palin clan, is certainly not drug around on media day after day as this was, are they? Nothing to see there!
My family answered my questions about the racist history of America frankly and from what we would call a liberal perspective. They told me about the night riders who went and kept up black people the nights before elections and terrorized them, ran roughshod over them, the fraudulent poll questions, and all that corruption.
That white men raped black women during slavery was no mystery. I thought it ended with slavery. But one afternoon in the second semester of my college Black History course, two angry young black women brought up that white men were still raping black women.
This was in 1970. They said that white men drove into the black community to kidnap and rape black girls, and tossed them out of their cars when they'd had their sport with them. Both said it happened to them in the sixties.
I went home in a huff. We were a family that read every national news magazine and both local papers from the front page to the last, and watched the television every night to be informed. Rapes of white women were on the evening news, so why wasn't this in the news, so it could be dealt with?
This I asked of my aunt who'd come to my home to help me finish high school when orphaned, who was born decades before women got the right to vote. Did she know white men were still raping black women?
She didn't hold back. She said it was known to be part of college fraternity intitations back in the early decades of the last century. It just wasn't talked about in media, but she told me about the abuse of many women as she was growing up.
She'd always told me to be very alert and wary of certain things that men would do, and to fight discrimination, to be independent and to never, ever depend on a man for anything. So she didn't hold back on this aspect of white male culture of the past, either.
For many years I imagined what my response would have been if I were a black woman and I cannot say I'd handle the history with the grace most black women I've known have. If it was me, no white person would escape my wrath, which I admitted to myself. It meant I needed to have a level of spiritual growth to not bite people's heads off if in that situation, to be more human. Not that I was in the habit of biting anyone's head off, but the feeling was there at times.
That media meme of the 'angry black woman' used on Michelle Obama and all other outspoken black women comes from what is either fear, guilt, or a bit of truth. Until the bullshit ends, I'd say to stay pissed.
For me, it was like this for black women: First, they were discriminated for their color; second, their gender; and third, in a hideous way, all that should have been given to them many white women expect, was denied them.
Their very being, their bodies and intimate parts of themselves, stomped on and ripped apart, such as their children. Like a slaughterhouse, not a bit of respect for their pain, their loss, their love. All of higher attributes insulted, degraded, talked about in cravenly, disgusting ways, as animals.
This little joke is another sign of the inhumanity women who are POC bear in this world and in this nation. No it is not that blatant, but see, it is right under the surface. It pisses me off no end and I am not one done this way. Everyone should be angry at this, I think.
As far as getting through to these... persons... who would do such things... it's hopeless. They are the same as those cheering blacks being lynched and multilated. They are the lowest form of life, just savages and not sentient beings, IMHO.
Maybe I went off topic but I figure this the place to get this off my chest. I've got more, but I'll hold back on the rest. I hope someone can find out who manufactured this damn costume, get after them legally if possible and/or boycott them.
I was taught in school about the KKK, cross burnings, Jim Crow, sharecroppers, lynching and naturally with slavery, what the fate of black women were in that system. I always felt them to be the most abused of all on a visceral level that enraged me as teenager. It's frowned upon, but there was a long time I felt that rape should be a capital offense, but we are told it is no big deal, like this will be excused as freedom of speech, a joke like Rush makes.
Just a joke, to degrade a person sexually or lie about them, why don't you just lighten up and have a sense of humor? Really, no harm, no foul, move along.
I also felt sick going over the threads on this and seeing what was said on line elsewhere. I felt it was not just saying she was not human, but neither was he, and in the background of the media coverage was the message:
'Blacks all act like brutes and so they should have no power. See, this proves how nasty they are.'
But anyone who has seen or read of Justin Bieber's behavior, or the Palin clan, is certainly not drug around on media day after day as this was, are they? Nothing to see there!
My family answered my questions about the racist history of America frankly and from what we would call a liberal perspective. They told me about the night riders who went and kept up black people the nights before elections and terrorized them, ran roughshod over them, the fraudulent poll questions, and all that corruption.
That white men raped black women during slavery was no mystery. I thought it ended with slavery. But one afternoon in the second semester of my college Black History course, two angry young black women brought up that white men were still raping black women.
This was in 1970. They said that white men drove into the black community to kidnap and rape black girls, and tossed them out of their cars when they'd had their sport with them. Both said it happened to them in the sixties.
I went home in a huff. We were a family that read every national news magazine and both local papers from the front page to the last, and watched the television every night to be informed. Rapes of white women were on the evening news, so why wasn't this in the news, so it could be dealt with?
This I asked of my aunt who'd come to my home to help me finish high school when orphaned, who was born decades before women got the right to vote. Did she know white men were still raping black women?
She didn't hold back. She said it was known to be part of college fraternity intitations back in the early decades of the last century. It just wasn't talked about in media, but she told me about the abuse of many women as she was growing up.
She'd always told me to be very alert and wary of certain things that men would do, and to fight discrimination, to be independent and to never, ever depend on a man for anything. So she didn't hold back on this aspect of white male culture of the past, either.
For many years I imagined what my response would have been if I were a black woman and I cannot say I'd handle the history with the grace most black women I've known have. If it was me, no white person would escape my wrath, which I admitted to myself. It meant I needed to have a level of spiritual growth to not bite people's heads off if in that situation, to be more human. Not that I was in the habit of biting anyone's head off, but the feeling was there at times.
That media meme of the 'angry black woman' used on Michelle Obama and all other outspoken black women comes from what is either fear, guilt, or a bit of truth. Until the bullshit ends, I'd say to stay pissed.
For me, it was like this for black women: First, they were discriminated for their color; second, their gender; and third, in a hideous way, all that should have been given to them many white women expect, was denied them.
Their very being, their bodies and intimate parts of themselves, stomped on and ripped apart, such as their children. Like a slaughterhouse, not a bit of respect for their pain, their loss, their love. All of higher attributes insulted, degraded, talked about in cravenly, disgusting ways, as animals.
This little joke is another sign of the inhumanity women who are POC bear in this world and in this nation. No it is not that blatant, but see, it is right under the surface. It pisses me off no end and I am not one done this way. Everyone should be angry at this, I think.
As far as getting through to these... persons... who would do such things... it's hopeless. They are the same as those cheering blacks being lynched and multilated. They are the lowest form of life, just savages and not sentient beings, IMHO.
Maybe I went off topic but I figure this the place to get this off my chest. I've got more, but I'll hold back on the rest. I hope someone can find out who manufactured this damn costume, get after them legally if possible and/or boycott them.
And two - a big old kick and rec at a high traffic time for you!
