Video and response sparking outrage
On Sept. 8th, celebrity news site TMZ posted the full video of Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice brutally assaulting his wife, Janay Palmer, in an elevator after what appeared to be a heated argument between the couple. The event took place in February, and shortly after Rice was indicted for third-degree aggravated assault, with segments of the video being released to the public. The recent disclosure of the full video, however, has reignited a media firestorm – with the NFL dropping the running back indefinitely while the media engages in a righteous feeding frenzy on Rice, his wife, and the NFL.
Rice’s use of physical force against his wife was undoubtedly a scumbag move, and he deserves to be criminally charged, but the story to this point has been one-dimensional at best, with the media pointing fingers at anyone they can and the NFL running as fast as they can away from the stink of Rice. Rice was guilty, Rice needs help, but let us be clear: Rice is not alone; this problem is systemic. As opposed to the NFL renouncing any association they have with Rice, why not step in and pay for the therapy Rice and his wife need? In fact, why not step up and put money into education on critical matters like spousal abuse in general. A company that often puts millions of dollars behind success stories from broken homes, it’s not unlikely that a similar incident might happen in the near-future, and by ignoring Rice, the NFL is also ignoring any meaningful dialogue about spousal abuse in major-league football. Likewise, the media’s preoccupation with painting Rice as a horrible guy drowns out any discussion of why spousal abuse happens in the first place.
That there are still instances of men hitting women in 2014 is obviously horrible, but extreme stigmatization of the abuser doesn’t resolve anything. As a culture, we need to condemn these actions to a certain extent, but also understand the context in which they happen if we want to work towards resolving them. Shaming and shutting out the abuser makes us as a society feel better (i.e. “That’s a bad man, unlike me”), but it doesn’t bring us any closer to solving the social issue of spousal abuse.