Marissa Alexander

Brown resumed punching Robyn F. and she interlocked her fingers behind her head and brought her elbows forward to protect her face. She then bent over at the waist, placing her elbows and face near her lap in [an] attempt to protect her face and head from the barrage of punches being levied upon her by Brown. Brown continued to punch Robyn F. on her left arm and hand, causing her to suffer a contusion on her left triceps (sic) that was approximately two inches in diameter and numerous contusions on her left hand.

I have some thoughts on this Mother’s Day. Some thoughts that won’t leave my mind. There is a mother named Marissa Alexander who was just sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot in the direction of her abusive husband.

The italicized excerpt above comes from the affidavit/ search warrant detailing the violence enacted on Rihanna by her then-boyfriend Chris Brown in 2009.

I recently saw the film, Think Like a Man, in a theater. When Chris Brown appeared on the screen, women swooned and howled in adoration of him. Some men even clapped. I don’t understand.

I don’t understand how a woman who has been repeatedly maimed and battered by a man, becomes the aggressor. I don’t understand how a man that bites and punches a woman until blood and contusion, becomes a king. Regardless of how we feel about about their music or popularity, that was a person who attacked another person. Alexander is also a person reacting to years of attacks by another person, but faces 20 years in prison.

This case draws eerie comparisons and likeness to the Trayvon Martin case. But what’s been interesting to me is the narrative and rhetoric that has surfaced in the black community. I keep hearing people lament the difficulties and hardships that young black men face in this country. And while I agree that black men have been systematically brutalized, I don’t believe the conversation should stop there. I don’t believe deficiencies in legal action only apply to black men, and to further that belief is to deny the slew of events that reflect larger, communal struggles for black men, black women, and other marginalized groups. This case being one.

This case takes place in the same state that acquitted Casey Anthony, a woman that the media helped portray as a helpless, mentally unstable mother. But what about this mother? What about Marissa Alexander? What about Raven Dozier, the young, pregnant, black woman who was recently kicked in the stomach by a police officer in Dekalb County, Georgia? Where are the stories about her struggle? I don’t see many.

But I do see and hear an unhealthy, absurd conflation of domestic violence, black man’s struggle, and heroism. I keep hearing stories about how we must protect our sons against police misconduct. I agree. But what about our daughters, mothers, aunts, and sisters? I know in writing this that I’m opening myself up to “you’re not down with the struggle” arguments from my own people. But I know that a struggle that doesn’t acknowledge the collective strife of the community, is not one that I want to be a part of. That divisive way of understanding government injustice only promotes the same voicelessness that we aim to combat.

I could write so much more, but I want to think about my mother in this moment. I want to think about the fluffy pancakes she prepared, and the love she sings daily.

I want to honor black mothers who are continually framed and portrayed as asexual, loud, troublemakers via film, the government-issued Moynihan Report, and gross sentencing that doesn’t consider their humanity. I have to think about Alexander’s children, who will be nearly adults when she is released. I have to think about a man who physically attacks a pregnant woman and doesn’t see a problem with that.  I have to think of the criminalization of black mothers and understand that their fight is also mine.

I cannot exist in limited frameworks that enforce our silence. Everything is not alright for anyone. And I’m saying it.