About 
2012
Print
EmailSome of youse may be late on this, but the video of hipster rapper Charles Hamilton [25] getting popped in the jaw by his ex-girlfriend has been floating around the Internets for a minute now.
It starts off where most of these things kinda YouTube promo-farts start off--banal, self-serving. Hamilton decides it would be a good idea to engage his ex-girlfriend and assistant (WTF?) Briana Latrice [26](I know, right?) in a rap battle, which seems like some promising entertainment. Until, at about the 2:25 mark, while Hamilton is in the middle of a verse, she gets at him with a pretty decent right cross. I know the fight game, and lemme say that with just a little more precision? Briana could have knocked Charles Hamilton the eff out. Dude looks about a buck ten, and she probably got him by at least 20 pounds. At least. The video caused kind of a stir in hip-hop circles, and provoked a natural question: What Would You Do?
Not for nothing, the young lady apologized [27], saying that she can be "emotional" sometimes. UH-huh. Me and the homie Toure went at it on Twitter [28], my contention being that Hamiliton wasn't neccesarily a better man, but almost certainly a different man for not meeting violence with violence. Me? I'm a proponent of filing charges in domestic violence situations, and this Hamilton should have filed charges.
When I was young in the game -- like, high school-- I used to rock a boiling pot on my head with "KANGOL" written on the side, so I've been a fashion casuallity. But let's face it: A grown man walking around with pink headphones, a Sonic The Hedgehog T-shirt and a stuffed animal on his arm was probably going to get punched in the face by someone anyways, just on principle. But looking at the video, all jokes aside, I doubt this was the first time she'd hit him. Doubt it. Hamilton was not in shock or taken aback: instead, he reacted like someone who had been down this road before, and had a fairly routine response. They probably get down like this on the regular, and we have an incident of domestic violence on video --- where are the police? Where is the outrage?
Well, let me say that there has mostly been none. The girl is being hailed and Hamilton just looks a little more ridiculous than he may normally look. I've tabled a few suggestions about what men should do when attacked by women [29]. To the extent that it happens --which, statistics suggest, may be more than we think--women have to stop attacking men, because it puts men in Charles Hamilton's place, where you have to ask yourself a question. Whether to hit a woman back isn't really the question. Rather, why is she taking a conversation to a place where a question like that is posited and has to be answered (in the self-defense) often in a split second?
The Charles Hamilton Question is, ladies, why is violence on the table, and when it is how do you reasonably expect men to repond?
Comments