They brag about sleeping with each other's close friends.
They disrespect and denigrate each other as loud as they possibly can.
They invade each other's personal space.
They don't keep their hands to themselves.
They don't drop the freaking camera to help a girl or woman who's been attacked.
They put a slam on a woman that would make the WWE's John Cena wince with pain.
They simply don't walk away. They keep going without stopping.
When you watch the video, it goes a little beyond the fact that the teenage boy in the video was dead ass wrong for manhandling a female. Period. End of story. There's no argument. He was wrong.
She was wrong too. She should've respected his personal space, and she should've had self-respect for herself. At the same time, I've been heated with my boyfriend, and I have at times nagged him mercilessly. Guess what? He would never lift a finger to hit me, nor has he. And you know what? That doesn't make him a "good" man. That makes him a "man." Unless the boy taped in this video gets his shit together, he never will be a man, and he will always be a boy who will find himself in crappy relationships that go nowhere.
"But she was all in his face?"
And? He started threatening her with bodily harm simply because he felt his "manhood" was being insulted, or he felt like he had to protect his "honor." We are in 2009, there is no reason for us to continue to perpetuate the fuckery that is an honor culture anyway. Matter of fact, that's what's killing black men anyway. There is a certain level of honor that comes with simply letting people act a fool by themselves, embarrassing themselves. A real man would've told her to simply stop invading his personal space, and had she continued talking shit, just walk away.
He is the only person who can control his boundaries. There's nothing wrong with moving away from the person who is not respecting your boundaries. And it's sad to see that this is one "brother" who has been taught to believe that black women deserve to be manhandled if they get too "sassy." Way to go!
She is not innocent. It is clear, by his bragging about sleeping with her friends, that he's a piece of work, and I don't mean that in a good way. Let him be the only one to humiliate himself, and show himself for the walking piece of offal that he is. While it is never okay to hit a man, it is never okay to invade and wage war against someone's personal space. She, like him, fell into the trap that makes black women fall prey to believing that they need to be loud, menacing and obnoxious to prove their point and get their way. I personally would've kicked his balls in had he done that to me, but then again, while I've nagged, I would not put myself in her position over something as brain draining as some teenaged simp not keeping his dick in his pants.
We need to teach black boys, LIKE black girls, that respect for themselves is way more important than protecting some idea of what "honor" is. We need to teach them to respect each other as well. When black women are taught that black men "ain't shit," and when black men are taught that black women "ain't shit," stuff like this happens.
And you know what? We all lose.
