Stephen A. Smith Missed A Chance To Help Domestic Violence Awareness

It’s no secret that ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith has foot-in-mouth disease. It’s the reason why ESPN hired him – they wanted a loudmouth who could push the envelope when need be – a kind of Wendy Williams of sports who could generate ratings through provocation. There’s someone like him in every media outlet these days to keep the conversation salacious and to ensure that the dialogue never gets boring, or even more of a rarity, reasoned.

(Let me make a quick disclaimer here – I do know Stephen A. – worked with him as a colleague many years ago and I can attest to the fact that he’s as prone to speaking his mind privately as publicly, no matter what the issue.)

In his latest controversy, Smith’s feet are being held to the fire for comments he made about the NFL suspension of Ravens running back Ray Rice. Rice was charged with third-degree aggravated assault after a surveillance camera in an Atlantic City casino caught the seven-year vet dragging his then-fiancée Janay Palmer out of an elevator. She was unconscious and police reports say it was because Rice knocked her out cold after she spit on him during an argument at a bar.

Palmer is now Rice’s wife. As a first time offender, Rice agreed to a diversion program that will allow him to avoid jail time.  Because he was indicted but not convicted of any crime, and because Palmer reportedly told NFL commissioner Roger Goodell that Rice had never been violent with her before, the NFL handed out a 2 game suspension, less than what has been meted out to other players for less serious offenses.

Domestic violence is a known problem in the NFL, as it is in life outside of football. That’s beyond debate. As someone whose job it is to stay abreast of news, I can tell you that that one of the most common news stories of any week is a woman – and increasingly entire families – being murdered at the hands of a domestic partner, boyfriend or husband.

In his attempt to make some kind of sense of this, Smith suggested in so many words that women make themselves less of a target for dangerous and violent men. I’m going to believe that what he actually meant was that if you know you are dealing with a nut, you should probably be cautious if you see them ramping up behavior that has proven to be dangerous to you in the past. After public pushback, including from his own college Michelle Beadle, Smith sent out a  lengthy tweet,  which further confused the issue. Then he deleted that tweet and tweeted again, apologizing for being “inarticulate” and reiterating that he didn’t mean what his words were interpreted to mean. Sigh.

Here’s the real problem. Rice, whatever his issues, is but a minuscule part of a huge overall problem. Smith missed an opportunity, given the huge platform that he has on ESPN,  to directly address the causes of most domestic violence –  the men who perpetuate it. Though Smith acknowledged the persistence of domestic violence, he passed the buck from the men who perpetuate it onto the women victimized by it.

What Smith could have and should have done is address the men watching and acknowledge that there is a real problem AMONG MEN that allows domestic violence to continue. He could have said that there are men who think that hitting a woman is OK if she mouths off to you, or that spitting on someone is equivalent to punching them in the face, and that there are men who are not emotionally mature enough to handle conflict, disagreement or the end of a relationship without resorting to physical violence.

Even domestic violence advocates who once focused on getting women away from an abuser, have shifted their focus to include men. They have realized that a woman leaving an abusive man simply allows another unsuspecting woman to be abused or killed. And until we deal with the underlying issues that many men have in intimate relationships and we have other men willing to cosign it, these assaults and murders will continue.

Men need to make it clear that a man who hits a woman is not a man and is not welcomed or respected among men. Men want the approval and brotherhood of other men – there is a wealth of psychological research that confirms that. That is one of the reasons why football exists – because it’s a sport that men play exclusively (in the professional ranks) and bond over.

Smith lost a moment to imprint onto the men watching that abusers should earn nothing but scorn and ostracization from other men. Because if that were in fact, true, maybe at least one would have thought about it twice before he raised his fist to a woman. Maybe. But we’ll never know.

Instead, we’ll have to continue to raise a generation of girls who feel that they have to watch what they wear and say because men are not putting enough pressure on other men to stop making this behavior acceptable and stop praising and promoting men who are OK with it.

Maybe Rice will now become one of those men and use this moment for some good. But I’m not holding my breath.  I’m just hoping that the continued assault and murder of mothers, sisters, aunties and daughters and the resultant impact of their loss to their families and community, influences as few good men to step up for them and for women everywhere.

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