Ray Rice and Chris Brown Should Be Forgiven

Ray Rice and Chris Brown Should be Forgiven

 

Americans and the sports world have gotten all exercised over Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice after the release of a surveillance tape  showing his brutal knock out punches delivered last February to his future wife Lanay Palmer in an Atlantic City hotel elevator.

Prior to that release, the National Football League had suspended Rice for two games for conduct unbecoming to the League but, following a public uproar over the tape, Rice was summarily sent packing by the Ravens and suspended indefinitely by the NFL. 

However, in all fairness to Rice and other athletes as well as entertainers, especially black athletes and entertainers, none of them are wholly responsible for their criminal behavior since we now live in a society that selectively condones such violence and, in the case of blacks, many hail from a culture in which violent criminality often supersedes common decency.

Of course, celebrities of all colors tend to inordinately get involved in acts of violence against their spouses and others because they somehow feel entitled to do anything they want to do by virtue of their celebrity status and stardom which usually enables them to escape serious punishment and gain public forgiveness.

Thus, when Sean Penn smacked his then-wife Madonna with a baseball bat and Charlie Sheen beat up his ex-wife Brooke Mueller and shot his fiancee Kelly Preston. and Bill Murray assaulted and almost killed his ex, their careers  were unaffected and frequently even enhanced by their notoriety.  While similar acts committed by, say, a corporate executive or your average joe would get them fired on the spot and/or land them in jail, celebs pretty much escape both censure and condemnation.

Like Penn, Sheen, and Murray, Ray Rice and recording artist Chris Brown were raised in  fairly comfortable  households but, unlike the former trio, they grew up surrounded and immersed in today’s black culture that glorifies violence and general disorder.

For example, when repeat jailbird Chris Brown beat his girlfriend Rihanna to a bloody pulp in 2009, he was sentenced to probation and community service, an agreement he soon violated with his violent behavior, and the songstress actually reinstated him as her beau after he apologized to her. . .   (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=38935.)