Why is No One Bringing Up This Common Denominator in the NFL Domestic Violence Stories?

The NFL is taking a beating in the news. It seems the whole league is filled with wife beaters.

Here’s a few we know about. First, of course, is Ray Rice:

MSNBC reports that Jonathan Dwyer was also arrested for domestic violence:

And here are twelve NBC News says are still playing, despite the allegations:

Ray McDonald

Chris Cook

Brandon Marshall

Tony McDaniel

Kevin Williams

Santonio Holmes

Greg Hardy

Dez Bryant

Erik Walden

Donte Whitner

Randy Starks

Frostee Rucker

Now again, that’s not my list.  I didn’t cherry pick those names.  That’s from NBC News.

Here are a few more names, this time from CNN:

AJ Jefferson

Robert Reynolds

Rod Smith

I could go through the USA Today database.  At the top, I clicked on “Category” and went through all the arrests listed under “Domestic Violence,” which wasn’t easy because the site auto-refreshes.  Thanks for that, USA Today.

The results?

I counted sixty-six additional names.  They were all black players.  Feel free to go look yourself.  If I missed one, I’d be glad to know about it.

So, at the risk of once again being labeled a racist, I’m going to go ahead and say what people are thinking but are afraid to say:  perhaps this isn’t an NFL issue as much as it is a cultural issue.

And it’s not just me saying this.  It’s those racists at the Huffington Post:

The high toll gun violence exacts on black males is all too well known. Less known is the fact that black women also face a disproportionate risk of lethal violence.

That’s what we found in a new study released by my organization, the Violence Policy Center, for Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Using data from the FBI’s unpublished Supplementary Homicide Report, we found that black women are murdered by men at a rate more than two and a half times higher than white women.

In 2011, the most recent year for which such data is available, black females were murdered by males at a rate of 2.61 per 100,000 in single victim/single offender incidents. For white women, the rate was 0.99 per 100,000.

And those right wing nut jobs at Time say this:

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, an estimated 1.3 million American women experience DV/IPV each year. Women make up 85% of the victims of DV/IPV. Despite this, most cases are never reported to the police and most women are victimized by people they know.

And for Black women, it’s an even bigger problem: Black women are almost three times as likely to experience death as a result of DV/IPV than White women. And while Black women only make up 8% of the population, 22% of homicides that result from DV/IPV happen to Black Women and 29% of all victimized women, making it one of the leading causes of death for Black women ages 15 to 35. Statistically, we experience sexual assault and DV/IPV at disproportionate rates and have the highest rates of intra-racial violence against us than any other group.

Finally, this from those racists at The Grio:

Advocates working to end domestic violence state having resources to escape abusive relationships is critical. For black women, these resources are extra-vital, as the domestic violence rate is disproportionately higher in our community.

Figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Women’s Health show that 25 percent of women in the U.S. will become victims of domestic violence in their lifetime. But nearly 30 percent of African-American women have been subject to intimate partner violence, which includes rape, physical assault, or stalking.

Why is this?  What are black women so much more likely to be victims than other groups?

Well, there’s this opinion:

their plight may not change anytime soon because of complex underlying causes that in some cases stretch back generations: unemployment, poverty, lack of education, incarceration and violent environments.

“A lot of groups have economic issues, but a lot of groups have not had the economic issues we’ve had for as long as we’ve had, for the reasons that we’ve had,” said Dr. Gail Wyatt, a professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral sciences at UCLA for 35 years.

Ok, but these are professional football players.  They have jobs, are making very good money, many have graduated college and don’t live in violent environments.

Why then is there this disparity?

I believe it has something to do with a lack of fathers coupled with the objectification of women in rap.  Steve Harvey doesn’t think we can blame hip hop, but then says:

Blame is placed on other outlets in order to relieve the strain from the image that are reflected in the mirror. Men didn’t just start degrading women in Hip Hop, it started way before then and just happened to transition to it.

Releasing the book, Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man, Steve Harvey caught up with Rollingout.com to speak on how Black men haven’t taken charge to mold the minds of the younger generation and make them realize the error of their ways.

“We forgot to teach the generation under us the business of just being cool. We messed around and let cool go out of style. Now they replaced cool with hard. Now ain’t nobody cool no more, everybody wanna be hard now. Once you take cool out the business, cool affects a lot of stuff.”

The ripple effect has promoted negativity and as young Black men have continued to embrace this aspect, they believe that it’s acceptable and bring it with them to rap and usher in a negative misconception of how women should be regarded.

“We are the only race of people, Black men, that degrade our women in our music. We are the only race of people, how did we manage to do that?”

Citing that being a gangster is locally accepted now, Harvey adds that men feel that emotions are irrelevant and only stand behind what makes them feel as though they are “hard.”

“It has resulted in how we talk to our women. We don’t talk to our women smooth no more cause we ain’t cool no more. Now we talk to our women hard.”

Perhaps this has happened precisely because there aren’t as many dads teaching their sons how to treat a woman, and instead they’re learning it from these guys:

Why do I bring this up?

Because nobody was talking about the elephant in the room.  (They were probably too scared of being called a racist.)

Because the unemployment, poverty, lack of education, incarceration and violent environments black Americans experience is the result of liberal social experimentation.

And because the goal here should be ending domestic violence, not punishing the NFL.

Focus on the cause of the problem to end it.

Tell me what you think below.