Cut Chris Brown some slack…Kanye, you are out of your mind.

We were going through the blog “Conversations with an unapologetic Black Liberal” at TicosLand.com in Costa Rica and came across some staggering statistics that we needed to verify. Why were we on the Black Liberal blog? Well, we have been very busy posting about the Chris Brown and Rihanna incident which kept them from appearing at the Grammy’s.

We happen to agree that it is quite insane to say that we should cut Chris Brown a break (Kanye West) or that beating women is just a part of life (Terrence Howard.) What’s even more insane is that there is an undercurrent that domestic violence is okay, that perpetrating an assault against the person you supposedly love is all right. The attitudes are even worse in Costa Rica. Some men in this country feel that a woman should be beaten on a regular basis, whether she needs it or not. There was a woman who was interviewed on the TV a few months back who summed up the attitudes that permeate Costa Rican society in regards to domestic violence. A woman was asked, “Does your domestic partner beat you a lot?” Her reply was, “No, he doesn’t beat any more than the usual….”

Let’s go back to Chris Brown and Rihanna as a microcosm of the domestic violence problem. It is alleged that Rihanna threw Chris Brown’s car keys out of the car. This was apparently enough for Chris Brown to feel it was okay to “put it on her” as is commonly said. He beat her. During the beating, he grabbed her about the neck and choked her until she passed out. The pictures show that Rihanna was battered, scratched and bruised. It was all over TMZ and the rest of the Internet. The pictures made the rounds and everybody saw what we saw at TicosLand.com. We cannot downplay the incident. We cannot simply chalk it up to youthful indiscretions. Young men who beat women eventually become old men who beat women. The violence escalates and brings us to some mind-numbing numbers.

It is a sad fact low-income women, young women and some minorities are disproportionately victims of domestic violence and rape. The greatest risk of nonfatal domestic violence is for women from 20-24, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. The main factor for domestic violence seems to be income. If you are in a poor household, you are at higher risk of domestic violence, with women in the lowest income levels going through more than six times the rate of nonfatal partner violence as compared to women with the highest income levels, although we can see from Rihanna’s case that women in high income levels are not immune. However, when race is taken into account, African-American women face higher rates of domestic violence than their white counterparts and American-Indian women are victimized at more than double the rate of women of other races.  These numbers are staggering.

There is also a staggering impact on children. The Family Violence Prevention Fund states , “Growing up in a violent home may be a terrifying and traumatic experience that can affect every aspect of a child’s life, growth and development. . . . Children who have been exposed to family violence suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as bed-wetting or nightmares, and were at greater risk than their peers of having allergies, asthma, gastrointestinal problems, headaches and flu.” Women who experience physical abuse as children are at a greater risk of victimization as adults, and men have a far greater (more than double) the likelihood of perpetrating abuse. Males who grow up in a violent household become partner beaters.

At TicosLand.com in Costa Rica, we don’t know whether Chris Brown comes from a poor, but accroding to his comments on the Tyra Banks show, he did grow up watching his father beat his mother. However, growing up poor or a victim of violence does not excuse the violence he perpetrated upon Rihanna. If we are to stop the chain of violence, we must stand up and say that it is not okay to beat your partner at any time, no matter what. Our advice to Chris Brown: Get help! It is the only way that you are likely to cut the domestic violence chain. If not, then you are well on your way to becoming your generation’s Ike Turner.

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