The Slap and Will Smith Have Nothing to Do with Me

My Opinion about Violence: A Trauma Induced Response

My friends say, "Why do you care?  Jada, Will and Chris are millionaire celebrities.  This doesn't have anything to do with you."

Yes and No. It's true that the Academy Awards are mainly a big money making endeavor to get people to watch more movies and the pay scale is way out of our range.  At the same time, the Oscars are one of the greatest purveyors of culture and society in America.  

Jada Pinket-Smith was right to boycott the Oscars in 2016 because #OscarsSoWhite.  Chris Rock was just reinforcing the status quo when he joked, "Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna's panties.  I wasn't invited." Then he went on to take a jibe at Will Smith, "It's not fair that Will is good and didn't get nominated.", implying that she was just a resentful woman.  Letting everyone know that he tried to get into Rihanna's panties added lateral insult to injury.   

People are vilifying Jada for having domain over her own body and spirit when she and Will were separated.  She got into "an entanglement" and men our livid.  For Will, that may not be a good fit, but as a woman that was right on time.  How many times have we seen that motif reaffirmed in the other direction a la "Friends", "We were on a Break?!"  Will cheated too. Sexism 101.

Now because of Chris' stupid joke, there are memes and jokes spawning about her bald head.  Please consider the complex relationship that many Black women have with their hair.  I come from the Black is Beautiful generation.  These jokes target Jada, but hit women who are bald for whatever reason.  Male pattern baldness is widely recognized.  That is not the case for women. It is a double standard.  Sexism 102.

What is it about Black Women that makes them easy, throw away targets?  Are they supposed to be impervious? Often, they are bringing up legitimate concerns and points of accountability to bear. Still, #OscarsSoWhite.

Chris Rock's antics have had implications for Asians in America, as well. This year he dismissed Joseph Patel, when he awarded the 2022 documentary Oscar to Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and "four white guys". In 2016, he made 3 Asian kids the punchline of his set.  These jokes reinforce the Black and White Paradigm and the Model Minority Myth, which make the diversity within the Asian communities invisible and makes Asians easy targets for ridicule and marginalization.  Foremost, I am thinking of South East Asian refugees, who are being detained and deported, despite living most of their lives in the U.S. and whose parents were likely allies in the proxy wars throughout the region.  Yet, more specifically to me, American born Asians who do not fit the Model Minority Myth and languish by the wayside.  

The reason why I keep picking at the scab is because it is an opportunity for us to recognize the matrix that we are in. Our ideas of race, class, and gender are regenerating and it's important to pay attention to the media and Hollywood narratives.  

Will Smith, the Bagger Vance Magical Negro, has fallen from grace.  And if he is not the benevolent Black man that uplifts and makes white audiences feel better about themselves, then must he be vilified?  The trope of the violent, angry Black man is well worn and yet it is being perpetuated once again.  It fosters an irrational fear, with dire consequences.

I saw a statement that said that Will Smith has already been made to atone for more than Kyle Rittenhouse.  Are these things related?  I believe they are.  Black Lives Matter.  The media firestorm (both in the mainstream and on social networks) around this incident has made me question the nature of violence in America: the disproportionate "clutch my pearls" shock of "the slap" as compared to the desire to ignore slavery and police brutality.  

I have been thinking about masculinity and violence in this context.  What does it mean that Will witnessed his dad beating his mom when he was 9 years old and could not help her? What does it mean that Breona Taylor's boyfriend was arrested for trying to defend Breona and his home from intruders (unannounced cops)? What does it mean when you are standing on the slave auction block, your wife and children are sold away, and there is nothing you can do?  

Will's riches might be a buffer, but they are not a guarantee.  The LAPD could have arrested him, if Chris wanted to press charges.  The calculus and outcomes are different for Black and Brown people.  This has long been a challenge for people who want to address domestic violence AND defund the police.  My Aunt witnessed the pitfall of it first hand with her neighbor in Oakland.  Her neighbor's son had mental illness issues and he was having a fit.  He was not violent.  Her neighbor called the police in the hopes that they would peacefully talk her son down from his ledge.  Instead, the police arrived and shot him.  They killed him.

I have a visceral and relational fear of police from living in Oakland and San Francisco.  When dog walkers called 911 on Alex Nieto and the police killed him in Bernal Heights, I felt it in my bone marrow.  When police killed Sean Monterossa in Vallejo, my mom's home town, I was shaken.

Violence was the Beast that is missing from the white-washed "I have a Dream" projection of what the Civil Rights Movement was.  It has been dawning on me over the years, but it especially became clear to me this past Black History month when I was reading a biography of Coretta Scott King, listening to speeches by Fanny Lou Hamer and watching a reenactment of Harriet Tubman's freedom narratives.  While Dr. King was writing his letter from Burmingham Jail, cowards bomb their house.  Coretta and her children were home when it happened.  Fanny Lou Hamer was hounded, beaten and threatened with bombs for demanding representation at the the DNC and later for establishing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.  Harriet Tubman was beaten within and inch of her life and she still went back to free her people.  She lived with a fractured skull.

This stealth aggression is still going on today.  BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) officials recently tried oust to Lateefah Simon from the BART Board of Directors on a technicality.  She was demanding more accountability from BART police for murdering Oscar Grant.  People may know of him from Ryan Coogler's movie entitled "Fruivale Station", starring Michael B. Jordan.  Much like the way a police officer killed Duane Wright in Minnesota (home state of George Floyd and Philando Castile), BART police said they had been reaching for their taser.  For her leadership, Lateefah Simon and her daughter were receiving death threats and a coward left urine in her door step. AOC and Ilhan Omar receive death threats every day.

The question I keep wondering in all this is: Is violence proportional or does it exist on a continuum, when people say "Violence is never the answer."?  I think the answer is both. Violence is disproportionately experienced and condemned in America by Black and White people.  It also exists on a continuum. That is, violence flourishes on a spectrum of domestic violence, state violence, war abroad and beyond.

To me, the greatest violence is structural -poverty, food insecurity, lack of affordable housing, defunding and closing schools, red lining, predatory banking or outright denial, and an extractive economy.  AKA Capitalism reinforced by institutional racism and gender bias.

The reason why I connected these dots, is because I learned about my cousin Nick's death at the same time as the slap occurred on stage.  I also lost my Uncle Kenneth when I was 6.  Both Nick and Kenneth are beloved family to me.  Young, smart, charismatic, talented men, full of promise.  I think their souls were extinguished by a lack of economic opportunity and social mobility, the invisible violence of Oakland and Vallejo. 

What happened on stage should seem minor in comparison.  Yet, I couldn't escape the feeling that they were connected.  Will, Chris and Jada have a history that goes way back and it felt like watching a family fight erupt on stage.  No one wants to see that.  

I am sad because Will Smith could not escape the violence and the trauma. He was at the pinnacle of his career.  I was getting tired of seeing seeing Oscars nominated for Black actors playing maids, butlers, slaves, or supporting roles.  I reject the trope of the Angry Black Man.  Will Smith is one of the few A-list actors, in a lead position, who has been able to play multidimensional characters.  To be sure, there are many African American actors out there doing that, but none have had the same Academy limelight.  I think the predominantly White celebrity condemnation is outsized and the reverberations will be widely felt. Now we are going to miss out on representation and the hope for something more.  It is unfortunate.