Bad reaction

For the past three days, a story that has been popular in the news and on social media involves singer Solange Knowles - the younger sister of Beyoncé - attacking producer and rapper Jay-Z in an elevator at a party. Beyoncé, who is also Jay-Z's wife, was in the elevator as was a bodyguard; the latter held back the younger sister from Jay-Z for the duration of the elevator ride, although she was able to break free a couple of times to continue to strike him. At present, it is not known why Knowles attacked Jay-Z; only speculation and wild conspiracies have been presented as explanations.

The actions of Knowles, which are bad enough by themselves, are not the most disturbing part of this incident, in my opinion; rather, I'm more worried by the apparent reaction of the public via social media and comment threads. I wrote the following to a friend who was talking about the incident and the reaction to it:

"What really bothers me is the amount of people who seem to believe that if one person starts hitting another for seemingly no reason, the victim should be asked what they did for someone to hit them rather than the perpetrator be asked why they started hitting."

The narrative has focused on what Jay-Z might have done to provoke Knowles, rather than what Knowles' reasons were for hitting him; this reaction implies that a recipient of violent behaviour should be the individual under scrutiny instead of any aggressor. The extent of this line of thinking can be evidenced by the prevalence of the hashtag #WhatJayZSaidToSolange on Twitter. With a current lack of any evidence to the contrary, Jay-Z is the victim in this incident and it is wrong to assume that he has done something to cause another person to attack him. This is obvious victim-blaming and this mentality needs to stop.

The poor reaction has been exacerbated by all the people who find the incident hilarious (cue the endless "100 problems"/"Solange's first hit" jokes) and the countless Internet memes that have been generated to mock the event. One person attacking another is not funny at all. It is irrelevant that Jay-Z is a larger and stronger person than Knowles and that she might not have managed to harm him even without the intervention from the bodyguard: there is no humour in violence and no one should be laughing about it.

I can only hope that the people who have engaged in victim-blaming, laughed about/mocked what happened or otherwise been dismissive are a minority, albeit a vocal one. Victims of violence - regardless of gender or social status - are often reluctant to speak, usually because they are afraid of not being believed or, worse yet, of being laughed at or outright blamed for any abuse that they have received. When the general public takes a light-hearted approach to incidents such as this, that reluctance intensifies and people continue to suffer.