“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never break me.”
– Reported to have appeared in The Christian Recorder of March 1862, a publication of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where it is presented as an "old adage"
“The Academy is speaking out after Will Smith went viral, slapping comedian Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars. The moment came just after Rock had taken a dig at Will's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, saying, "Jada, I love ya. G.I. Jane 2, can't wait to see it." (Pinkett Smith has been open about her struggles with alopecia, an autoimmune disorder which causes bald spots and hair loss.) Moments later, Smith walked onto the stage and gave Rock an open-handed slap to his cheek. Smith then walked offstage and cursed at Rock from his seat, yelling, 'Leave my wife's name out of your f**king mouth.'
“Shortly after, Smith took home his first-ever Oscar for his leading role in King Richard, and took a moment to apologize to The Academy.
"'I want to apologize to the Academy, I want to apologize to all my fellow nominees,' he said during his speech. 'Art imitates life, I look like the crazy father, just like they said about Richard Williams. Love will make you do crazy things.... Thank you to the Academy, I hope you will have me back.'
“As for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization's official account tweeted following the incident.
"''The Academy does not condone violence of any form,' it wrote. 'Tonight we are delighted to celebrate our 94th Academy Awards winners, who deserve this moment of recognition from their peers and movie lovers around the world.'”
(Rachel McRady. “Oscars 2022: The Academy Speaks Out After Will Smith Slaps Chris Rock Live.” https://www.aol.com/oscars-2022-academy-speaks-smith-110632766.html. March 28, 2022.)
As I watched the news report of this story, I was greatly saddened. The media will show this clip over and over. Many people will love it. Some will discuss justification for the affronts. Others will simple shake their heads in disbelief. I'm certain people will look for some kind of message in the outburst. For a couple of weeks, the press will give this unfortunate incident as much attention as the deadly Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The fact is – Nothing is good about what happened between Will Smith and Chris Rock. Negative words – accusatory and threatening – and violence actions – sharp blows and aggressive movements – benefit no one. In particular, Smith lost his temper and chose to respond with a forceful attack. Whether duly provoked or not, he had no right to disrupt the ceremonies and strike Rock. Even if you think Rock was out of line with his comments, you cannot justify such actions.
Smith's public apology was predictable and an effort to save face. No, Will Smith, your actions had nothing to do with “art imitating life.” And, by the way, your public apology did not include any regret for the victim, Chris Rock. Sincere apologies come without conditions, excuses, or limitations. You thought more about your own skin with the Academy than about Rock's bruised cheek. Nothing justifies your actions.
What Does This Incident Teach Us?
Many people love this kind of spiteful interaction: they get a rush of excitement and a good dose of adrenaline watching such behavior. Macho actions manipulate people into seeing violence as permissible and entertaining because of how the victims of violence can be reduced to simplified, opposing foes deserving of retaliation.
You may even find violence has an evolutionary role to defend “territory” – in this case Smith becomes angry and aggressive to defend his mate.
In fact, scientists know that mice and other animals are drawn to fights. A relatively new study, detailed online in the journal Psychopharmacology, reveals the same clusters of brain cells involved in other rewards are also behind the craving for violence.
Study team member Craig Kennedy, professor of special education and pediatrics at Vanderbilt University, reports …
"Aggression occurs among virtually all vertebrates and is necessary to get and keep important resources such as mates, territory and food. We have found that the reward pathway in the brain becomes engaged in response to an aggressive event and that dopamine is involved.
"We learned from these experiments that an individual will intentionally seek out an aggressive encounter solely because they experience a rewarding sensation from it."
(Maria H. Couppis &
Craig H. Kennedy. “The rewarding effect of aggression is reduced by
nucleus accumbens dopamine receptor antagonism in mice.”
Psychopharmacology. 197:449–456. 2008.)
So, are you willing to draw the line between mice and human intellect, or does our curiosity consistently get the best of us? In truth, you and I have become desensitized to violence by the vast exposure of such acts in the modern media. You can come to see violence as acceptable behavior and thus increase your propensity to use such actions in even simple conflicts.
And, here is the MOST unfortunate result of violent incidents between Black males. The mainstream media continues to propagate an image that black males are a growing threat to the safety of the general public.
In 2015, Donald Trump, when he was a candidate for president, tweeted a misleading graphic that claimed that 97% of Black people killed are killed by other Black people, and that 80% of white people killed are killed by Black people.
Fact checkers deemed the tweet as promoting false statistics. The tweet was "quickly revealed as erroneous" according to the Washington Post. From the FBI's Universal Crime Report in 2014; 90% of Black people killed were killed by other Black people and 14.8% of white people killed were killed by Black people.
(Samara Lynn. “'Black-on-Black crime': A loaded and controversial phrase often heard amid calls for police reform.” ABC News. August 01, 2020.)
The phrase “Black-on-Black crime” is not only used by white people but also by some Black people calling out crime in their communities. It's a phrase that has been used by some conservatives to ask why the same activists and community members calling for police reform seemingly, in their view, don't express the same outrage when someone who is Black is killed or injured by another Black person.
Those who use the term say it is an important point in describing the disproportionate amount of crime perpetrated by Black people against other Black people.
However, there are activists and academics who say that "Black-on-Black crime" is an offensive phrase; its origins rooted in America's racist legacy and meant to demean Black people as criminally inclined.
While the first widespread use of the phrase "Black-on-Black crime" can be traced back to the 1970s, the notion that Black people have inherent, collective proclivities to commit crime against others, including other Black people, goes much further back than that, says historian and professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, Khalil Gibran Muhammad.
"The idea that Black people kill each other is exceptional or something that can only be fixed by Black people is deeply rooted in the white supremacist past," Muhammad told ABC News.
(Samara Lynn. “'Black-on-Black crime': A loaded and controversial phrase often heard amid calls for police reform.” ABC News. August 01, 2020.)
Some also say it is misleading – white people are mainly killed by white people, they say – but there is no conversation about "white-on-white" crime.
And, the Bureau of Justice Statistics' 2019 crime victimization statistics report shows those who commit violent acts tend to commit them against members of the same race as the offender.
Offenders were white in 62% of violent incidents committed against white victims, Black in 70% of incidents committed against Black victims and Hispanic in 45% of incidentscommitted against Hispanic victims, according to the BJS report.
(Rachel E. Morgan, Ph.D., and Barbara A. Oudekerk, Ph.D.,“Criminal Victimization, 2018.” Bureau of Justice Statisticians. September 2019.)
So, the term is meaningless, right? Not so fast. You can be sure to hear the Smith vs. Rock incident in shades of meanings associated with that phrase.
Consider the view of one Black conservative …
"The greatest danger for Black men in America is not a police officer, not somebody in a blue uniform, by any stretch of the imagination – it doesn't even compare. The greatest danger for a Black man in America today is another Black man," said E.W Bishop, an African American minister and lawyer who identifies as a conservative, on his podcast in October 2019.
"A liberal-leaning Democratic-voting socially conservative, older black person will also use the term," said Khalil Gibran Muhammad.
He said many of these older Black Americans use the term "to say, I care about my people, I don't want to see them hurting each other. What should we be doing to help," Muhammad said.
"Black people are committing crimes against themselves or causing harm in the community. There must be something wrong with Black people – that's the conversation unfortunately, that we're still having," said Muhammad. "And that is the racist legacy of the past repeating itself."
Studies show this threatening stereotype of Black men persists …
“Black men tend to be stereotyped as threatening and, as a result, may be disproportionately targeted by police even when unarmed. Here, we found evidence that biased perceptions of young Black men’s physical size may play a role in this process. The results of 7 studies showed that people have a bias to perceive young Black men as bigger (taller, heavier, more muscular) and more physically threatening (stronger, more capable of harm) than young White men. Both bottom-up cues of racial prototypicality and top-down information about race supported these misperceptions.”
(J.P. Wilson, K. Hugenberg, & N.O. Rule. “Racial bias in judgments of physical size and formidability: From size to threat.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(1), 59–80. 2017.)
Closing
Loaded words serve to anger, and violence begets further violence. Even though the public is in a twitter about this moronic behavior – undoubtedly taking sides and defending one or both of the people involved – there is no excuse for the actions, particularly at an assembly of conceivably intelligent adults who – fortunately or unfortunately – serve as model celebrities and influencers of modern society.
Bigots, racists, and other far-right individuals are sure to seize upon the fiasco to further their stereotypes of Black men and “those people's” propensity to violence. The actions mentioned above effectively reduced the Academy Awards to a “bitch fight” between two very prominent Black entertainers. Nothing is gained by this. Instead, it stains the proper acknowledgment of the tremendous work of the industry.
And, the public loves it. Chris Rock and Will Smith, you have a lot of fence-mending to do. Just maybe, we, the public, also need to check ourselves and our reactions to what amounts to another “egged-on fight at school.” The marks on the cheeks will eventually disappear, but the shame is permanent.
“Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying. But remove the satisfaction, and the act becomes hollow.”
–
Alan Turing, father of theoretical computer science and artificial
intelligence.
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