👏🏽

Thank you for writing this. It's an important story, not for the fleeting clickbait headlines, but its place in the larger discussion on white supremacy and its ubiquitous manifestations in culture and society, regardless of venue.

There's so much to unpack here.

The barbarization, caricature, and dehumanization of Black bodies.

The exploitation of these bodies as both object and subject, performer and performance, clown and punchline, in the deliverance of a contemporary grotesque minstrelsy lauded as free speech.

The condemnation, destruction, and evisceration of the Black family unit--through the public dissection of its marriage, intimate relations, and dynamics between the involved, consenting individuals--into the single-word alt-righter's wet dream labels of "alpha", "beta", and "cuck".

The denial of civility, decency, and empathy towards these bodies, particularly in the well-documented historic lenses of eugenics, medical apartheid, and healthcare inequity.

The erasure, marginalization, and immediate critique/selective qualification of historic achievement and consistent Black Excellence.

The curious exclusion of hot takes and spotlights on the Black community's internal conflict resolution, as enacted by Denzel Washington, Tyler Perry, and Sean Combs following the onscreen altercation.

More than anything, the perennial failure to #protectblackwomen.

The irony of Rock having produced the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize-winning documentary Good Hair (2009, HBO Films) is not lost on me.