Violence Begets Violence

by Irene Daniel

The images coming out of Baltimore, Md. this week left me emotionally drained and very, very sad. One of the images that has gone viral, and often trumpeted as heroic, is that of a mother beating, slapping and humiliating her teenage son, for participating in the rioting.

I don't know the woman. I am not fit to judge her, for I no nothing about her life, her personality or her history. "I lost it," were the words Toya Graham used to describe her reaction. I very well may have reacted the very same way. We never know how we will react to any particular situations until we are confronted with them. What I do know is what it feels like to be slapped, beaten and humiliated in public by your mother.

No, I wasn't rioting in the streets. But whatever I was or wasn't doing, my memory still carries those scars. It took decades of reading self-help books, psychotherapy, anti-depressant medication and a Juris Doctorate from UCLA to help me to see past the emotional and physical abuse I suffered as a little girl. Only then did I realize that: if I wasn't enough without that law degree from a prestigious law school, I would never be enough with it -- or anything else. It took a lot more work to get me to a place where my self-esteem was genuine and authentic; where I could be, and love, the real me.

When I was practicing law in Southern California, I worked for two different non-profit legal services corporations as the directing/managing attorney for domestic violence projects. In the mid-1990s, the County of Los Angeles, as well as other governmental and social agencies and organizations, invested heavily into such programs following the trial of OJ Simpson for the murder of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson.

I trained staff attorneys, paralegals and other support staff in litigating case after case after case, of men beating their wives. We all had to undergo 40 hours of Domestic Violence Training, which was very eye-opening, extensive and demanding -- intellectually and emotionally. We read relevant material and listened to many speakers talk about the effects, as well as the origins of domesic violence and abuse of family members. We even heard from Denise Brown, Nicole's sister, about how much the family suffered silently for years before her death, knowing that Nicole was being beaten, and feeling helpless to prevent further abuse.

We also learned that police officers are some of the worst offenders. And when police officers abuse their families, who will come to the rescue of the abused and frightened family? Other police officers who work with the man who terrorizes them? Guess again. When police officers abuse their families they are more likely to get away with it due to the "blue wall of silence," their fraternity brothers looking the other way.

For me personally, the most effective and most memorable of our speakers in the Domestic Violence training was not a woman, but a black man, whose name escapes me these 20 years later. What is important is not necessarily who he was, but what he said about the origins of such violence in men. It was the first time I had ever heard violence described as a "problem-solving tool." Those were his exact words and I will never forget them, or how they changed my perspective on the whole mess.

Almost without fail, adult males who beat their wives and children were themselves abused as children. I am not talking about reasonable discipline, I am talking about the humiliation that comes with being beaten in public. My mother was ill and should probably have been medicated for her depression and anxiety. I have forgiven her everything, but I grew up always being afraid of her and I knew that I could never completely trust her because she might fly into one of her fits of rage and beat me with sawed-off broomstick handles. Needless to say, I had a lot of bad days around it.

The woman in the video, Toya Graham, was desperately afraid that her only son might be arrested or shot. I am 100% sympathetic to her fear. My point is not about her, or judging her in any manner. The point that I am making is that her son will soon be a man. What are we, as a society, teaching him about violence?

His rock-throwing, however ill-advised and unlawful, was his reaction to his fears that his life was less valuable than a young white man's life to white police officers. His fear is not without merit, as we have seen case after case after case of white cops getting away with murdering black men, even shooting them in the back. Maybe he was thinking that, "If my life is likely to be taken by one of them, I might as well take some of them with me." Again, I am not condoning this ill-logic. I am just making the point that I can understand why he would feel that way. His answer to police brutality was more violence. How is that supposed to work?

His mother, Ms. Graham, reacted to his violent behavior with more violence -- and in a very humiliating manner. If we all react to violence with more violence, then how can reason and logic prevail? They have no place to even take hold.

In an interview with Ms. Graham and her son, Michael Singleton, the misguided teenager shared some of the ensuing conversation he had with his mother, and I found it most informative. His mother asked him what those police officers had ever done to him. While Michael has not, as of yet, been a victim of police misconduct, he admitted to be missing friends who were no longer here due to police activity. While this does not, in any way, excuse his choice to throw rocks at police officers, it does bring information into the conversation that I think is relevant.

Michael Singleton didn't see police officers as people there to protect him. He saw an enemy who took his friends away. Rightly or wrongly, his perspective is one shared by many, many young black men who perceive law enforcement officers as out to get them. To dismiss their fears outright and call them thugs and bitch-slapping them in the street, is to deny them their own humanity. How can you teach a young man respect if it is never afforded to him?

I only hope that someday, when Toya Graham's son Micheal is a grown man, he will not have the need to solve his problems by hitting and/or humiliating someone he loves. I know, not only from my professional training, but from my own personal experience, that using violence to solve your own personal problems gives birth to myriad unintended consequences. And those consequences may be just as deadly as those from which Ms. Graham was trying to protect her child in the first place.



Copyright 2015, Irene Daniel, All rights reserved.