I really enjoy Coates' writing because his clarity and critical thinking skills are top notch. He is right that there is a tradition of men beating women much more than the other way around. He is also correct that men are more lethal than women. But his central idea that the two cases are not comparable is logically faulty. He knows that, and anyone with common sense knows it too. That is why he is a great writer--his angles. There is a base truth to these cases--domestic violence is domestic violence. Period. ANYTHING above that truth that society argues about is soaked in relativism. We want to see things in a case by case way, arbitrarily, for one thing but paint a broad brush for others. But the fact of truth remains. Remember, we are talking about if Hope Solo and Ray Rice should be treated equally because of fact that they both committed the same crime. You can argue the different degrees of the crime, but its still the same crime. When you start trying to be arbitrary and relative to society's culture, you get what's happening in this thread, because it's impossible for everyone to relate to each other in this country. We all have different cultures and behaviors, but there is always the truth.
For example, Coates uses an example of how lynchings were on a different level than the "normal" way of death Sam Cooke and Tupac succumbed too. As we know, most blacks who were lynched certainly didn't deserve such a harsh death, and maybe Tupac himself would rather be shot than hung and burned. But the truth and fact of it all is that they all were murdered, and would certainly tell you that they would rather not be killed at all, even though they died to varying degrees by Coates argument. Once again, the faultiness of using different degrees of this or that crime is that it has to be relative to everyone for it to be understood that way. What I'm saying is, that use the of different degrees is why blacks were being lynched in the first place. Yeah it's a horrible way to die and is based in pure vile intentions, but white people didn't give a fukk because we weren't seen as humans anyway! When EVERYONE doesn't recognize the truth, AND you're a minority, you usually get fukked over. Lynching meant NOTHING to whites. They used "different degrees of crime" also. "Yeah, I know you stole my horse and fukked my mother, but this ****** just winked at my wife, so I'll deal with you later after we hang his ass."
Coates' argument that there is a tradition of men hitting women and women should be treated accordingly is the same reason why Mike Brown, Trayvon, John Crawford and many others are killed like dogs, but should be alive today. If Coates is correct,why aren't blacks looked at and treated differently? If Ray Rice is the worst because he is a man hitting a woman, should we be using the varying degrees of crime theory on Ray even though traditionally blacks have suffered because of it. Why isn't he a sympathetic black man in the media instead of being vilified? I mean, there is a tradition of overreaction when it comes to blacks committing crimes, right? Traditionally, white crimes never equaled the malice of black crimes, right? In my opinion, using Coates angle, he should be riding for Ray about how he is being treated since he committed the same crime as a white person but is getting five the grief. You know why he won't? Because his ass would get blacked out on by the same majority, white arbitrary thinking culture he got his "varying degree" hypothesis from. The same ones who raped millions of black women, killed millions of black men, lynched thousand of blacks, the ones who waited until NOW to have a national debate on domestic violence and won't let you put your damn hands up to surrender without a bullet to ya head. If possible, it's best to deal with the fact of right and wrong. Domestic Violence is wrong, period.
