It’s the back edge of summer, September 2023.
A Somali-American woman got slapped with a brick by a Black man in Houston. Bystanders, according to Rho Bashe, the woman who was assaulted, did nothing.
There’s so much to unpack on this matter. Some angles I’ll observe will piss people off, while others will be largely agreeable.
1. Protect Yourself Out Here
You cannot expect people to intervene during an encounter of street violence. Woman, man, it doesn’t matter who you are. You simply cannot expect strangers to intervene in a benevolent manner.
There are practical reasons why a bunch of folk — men — don’t interevene. For starters, they don’t know if they will be maimed, mutilated, or killed. It is difficult for people to consider a street violent encounter they didn’t start, their business. Sometimes, men feel like they are being manipulated when an unknown woman is in the middle of a street violence encounter. Some women out there explicitly start shit with a man just to have some other guy get into some shit.
Even further, who is paying the good samaritan’s bail? Who is paying for that intervening man’s medical bills? People — strangers — are typically transactional because they don’t know you. They don’t have any emotional stake in your well-being. Because of this fact, strangers are highly unlikely to engage in a thankless violent encounter in the street.