I remember years ago when I was in high school and the very
first MTV Real World aired. When I tell you loved that show! Omigod! I have the
entire season on DVD. And I actually
watch it occasionally. I cried when it was over. I was so in!
There is an episode that aired in which Julie, one of the
youngest housemates from the South gets into an altercation with the then, young
writer/poet, Kevin Powell. According to her he was verbally abusive when she
picked up the house line while he was on the phone with someone regarding a potential
job and was rude to him about being on the phone for so long. After that she
alleges that he confronted her with more verbally abusive words, threatened to
throw a candlestick at her and then left the apartment angrily, slamming the
door. We will never really know what
happened. It was all hearsay. What we do witness is the infamously heated
argument between Kevin and Julie out on the street on Prince and Broadway, an argument
I have watched many times and gone back and forth on in my opinions about what
both of them communicated to one another. I understood Julie’s reality as a woman. I have
in the years since, become more empathetic towards Kevin’s reality as a black
man. No matter what happened, I always liked Kevin. He is a writer, a poet, as
was I at the time and I loved learning about him and where he came from. But
reality television gives you very little reality.
Years later while I was in college I got the opportunity to
work on the autograph staff of the Book Expo and met Kevin Powell at his table
for the first time. He was promoting the release of his first book “Keepin it
Real” and I was excited and proud for him. At the same time it’s seems, I
learned through a friend that Kevin had beaten on a woman she knew. I was in total disbelief. I didn't want to
believe it. I could not reconcile what I learned with what I thought I knew are
wanted to believe about Kevin who was for me a hero of sorts. Sometime later he
came out to the public about the fact that he had committed DV against a woman
he was involved with. He wrote a public apology in a letter published in
Essence. It took me years to forgive him in my heart. And then years ago,
because I still like Kevin and support his political and charity work, I
actually read “Keepin it Real.”
The nature of life is that it happens. And to severely understate
the matter, life for Black men raised by single black women is hard for everyone
involved. There is no excuse for domestic violence but there are reasons and
Kevin is candid as hell about the details of his upbringing and the reasons
that My cumulatively lead to his regrettable violent behavior towards women in
the past and I had to give him credit for that. He laid it on the line. It was
a good hard read and I really admired his candor and vulnerability. It could
not have been an easy thing to do. But he got help. He got counseling. He is
now one the biggest advocates not only of education, Black youth, the arts and
more but also the prevention of domestic violence against women and young
girls. Who better to be an advocate against DV?
As I strive to grow and be a more conscious human being, I
realize that punishment in and of itself, really only treats a small percentage
of any problem. People are not born angry, abusive, racist, or sexist. They learn
it. And they can unlearn it. Of course they have to want to. But it also doesn’t
hurt to have a system in place that is also genuinely concerned with rehabilitation
not just prosecution, incarceration and death penalties. In fact, it can only
HELP.
My immediate reaction to seeing the video of Rice beat his
then fiancée in an elevator was very similar to the moment I learned that Kevin
had committed domestic violence. I could
not believe what I was seeing. I wanted to unsee it. It is horrible. And
initially it may have even sated by horror to hear that he was suspended. But then
my sister over at Life as I know it wrote and entry expressing a very honest
and unpopular view that she didn’t see how firing him would help the matter.
And I stepped back and thought, wait a minute. Right, what happens now? How does
this help him not to hurt his wife or even his daughter again?
You know what drug addicts usually do when a close friend of
theirs dies from and overdose? They do more drugs. To a sober person this may
seem illogical but in the mind of the addict to makes perfect sense. They do
drugs to escape pain and what is more painful than dealing with the death of a
loved one? No matter that the way you escape the pain may lead to death as
well.
If I heard a man beating on his wife in the apartment above
me, my response would not be to find out where he worked and get him fired. I’ll
tell you that much. How many assistants
has Naomi Campbell abused now? She’s still walking the runway and doing print
work. She did community service. She got help, counseling, therapy.
No comments:
Post a Comment