Do What You Can
The Gospels, Will Smith, "The Slap™️", and the novelty of publicly protecting Black women
I remember the first time I saw Michael Jackson do the moonwalk. I was up past my bedtime, transfixed on Michael’s sequin-dappled glove, his smooth choreography, and on of my favorite songs on Thriller. And then he glided, backwards, along the stage in a way I had never witnessed! It was an ethereal and communal moment, because babaaaay!, everyone was trying to moonwalk the next day, across the globe. We had witnessed something, together.
Well, last night, so many of us witnessed something. There’s a lot of processing, jokes, accusations, think-pieces and hot takes on Will Smith’s slapping of Chris Rock after Rock told a bald joke about Jada.
A few disclaimers:
I am one Black woman (who talks to other Black women, loves other Black women, and holds different views than some Black women). The views expressed are not necessarily those of the entire Black race.
I am human.
It is really important to recognize that The Slap™️ happened because a Black woman with alopecia was made fun of for her medical condition. It would be prudent to listen to Black, disabled women’s voices and processing of this.
If you’re looking for me to give a pat answer like, “violence is never the answer,” I will disappoint you. Violence is the answer in the U.S. every day. America is fluent in violence and it is a double-standard to feign shock at folks speaking the country’s mother tongue.
(Also, I will say this: Will Smith is the perfect person to deliver that slap to Chris Rock. They are equally black, male, and wealthy. There is no power differential.)
When this country talks about defending women, they don’t picture Black women (why isn’t Brittney Griner home yet?). There’s a bias that kicks in. The reasons why vary (because we are Black, because we are strong and independent, because we are too assertive, too loud, too whaaateeevvveer), but the bias is historical and pervasive. Black women’s bodies have been bred, assaulted, examined, scrutinized, experimented upon, and stolen from, with breathtaking regularity. Wearing our hair the way it grows out of our heads is legal grounds for job discrimination in most states.
I am thrilled by the violence that benefits and protects me, but that doesn’t mean it’s the way of Jesus. I am a broken product of my environment. I stay checking myself—working out my salvation with fear and trembling. (And: I don’t expect everyone to walk in the way of Jesus. Will Smith did apologize, but I doubt that’s the end of the road for him.)
It was the most curious sensation seeing Jada being defended by her husband. After watching the Williams sisters process Jane Campion’s snub directed at them…after watching Ketanji Brown Jackson tolerate bizarre, rude, petulant questions, I had trouble defining what I felt in my body after watching Jada not have to smile away the slights, or sit surrounded by cowards who whisper their support in private. Is this what it feels like to be publicly cared for?
I was unaccustomed to this kind of carrying on, witnessing Will set a boundary line in public, decorum be damned; watching him respond to the latest of Rock’s petty remarks toward Jada. He later called his movie co-star Aunjanue Ellis, “soft” as an honorific descriptor. I don’t have a pop-culture memory of a Black woman defended, publicly. Defending ourselves and others? Sure. Defamed? Of course. Defenseless and murdered? Yes. Ida B. Wells, Breonna Taylor, Eleanor Bumpers, Sandra Bland, Anita Hill, Simone Biles, Sojourner Truth. A long memory of self-defense and death.
So, I wonder: what are we going to do about what we have seen? How will this color how we treat people; how we judge them; how we police some bodies and offer the benefit of the doubt to others? Where’s the line for us and who drew it? I sure would like a long list of memories of Black women being protected.
I again find my solace in the gospels. In Mark 14, Jesus is on his way to betrayal, abandonment, and crucifixion. All of the togetherness, support, and trust displayed by the about-to-be-disciples in Luke 5 is stripped away by the end of this chapter.
In the midst of all the falling away, there’s the testimony of a woman who, in the house of a healed leper, broke an alabaster jar of expensive perfume and anointed Jesus. She exhibits a quiet, sensory, powerful solidarity, grief, and love poured out over Jesus, in exchange for nothing. She is, of course, immediately ridiculed by all the folks who “know better”; know what’s best with such clarity that they don’t even consult Jesus for his reaction.
Of course, they are loud and wrong. “Leave her alone,” Jesus says. He defends and explains her faith to the know-it-alls, her expression, and her gift to him.
“She did what she could,” he says of her. It’s what she had, what she gave, and how she gave it, and it’s enough for Jesus.
I hope and pray for two things:
That I live to palpably feel Jesus say “leave her alone” in all the spaces where that phrase and the power and love behind it is necessary.
That I do what I can.
I have exciting news to share: You can now read When and Where I Enter in the new Substack app for iPhone.
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