We’re all sitting around watching Rihanna get cuddly with Chris Brown while we slide across the floor to his music happily. But then he goes off and punches Frank Ocean. Then we watch this new debacle play out, with our jaws on the floor too. Chris Brown can be a monster. And we totally forgot. But it wasn’t his music that made us forget. It’s really all Rihanna and Karrueche’s fault that we forgave him in the first place.
But before you cut me down, let me explain why.
Since February 2009, I’ve been in a fierce battle with anyone who dares to protect Chris Brown for his actions against Rihanna that now infamous night. Being raised in a household of domestic violence, I was never tolerant…and extremely disgusted with the common idea that it was somehow the “woman’s fault” that she was attacked.
So when friends and fans were defending Breezy, saying that Rihanna was some crazed Island woman that hit him first, I silenced their arguments with the cause I had been trumping my whole life…
It’s never OK to hit a woman. And it’s not Rihanna’s fault. It’s never the victim’s fault.
That was my stance and I was sticking to it.
When they made up and started making music together, I chopped it up as just business.
And when she decided to forgive him, I stuck with that. It was the godly thing to do, after all.
When she appeared on Oprah and revealed her undying love for him, I could totally relate as a girl who has been in love with someone I probably shouldn’t be.
But when she started shamelessly flexin’ their love that was supposedly “nobody’s bidness” on Instagram…I had to give that a second thought, even if I had double-clicked on a few of those cutesy photos.
Chris Brown reached redemption and we had Rihanna to thank for making us forgive him! If she could do it, why couldn’t we?
Here was someone who had gruesomely beat Rihanna until there was blood splattered around the car and yet we had let him back into our lives musically. That’s one thing. But his relationships with two women, Rihanna and Karrueche, had led him back into our hearts.
Oh look, she’s wearing his shirt.
How cute they’re sleeping in the same bed.
Isn’t he a hopeless romantic!
Look how in love he is with Rihanna, poor Chris has to choose between two beautiful women.
Love is blind, eh?
Then he gets himself into yet another assault situation. And we all gasped, like we thought this could never happen again. Because the love that we see plastered all over these websites is in some twisted way a love that we want in another universe.
In reality, it’s not Rihanna or Karrueche’s fault. Their love lives, no matter how Bobby and Whitney (and entertaining) it is, should not determine whether or not we should tolerate violence or accept Breezy back into our lives. We did that ourselves by touting their love as the idyllic, romantic comedy, first love, Romeo and Juliet tragedy that we love to hate. They are our Bonnie and Clyde. And we forgave him because we wanted them to succeed.
But we should be looking at it as something else.
Like maybe a warning sign. Or the archetype of a guy we should never date. The real problem is us.
It was never your fault, Rihanna. And you can love whoever you want and we shouldn’t be easily influenced by that.
But for the rest of us…fool me once, shame on you. Punch someone twice….shame on us.
Christina Coleman is the News and Politics Editor at GlobalGrind. Prior to this she was a science writer. That explains her NASA obsession. She crushes on Anthony Bourdain. Nothing explains that.
Follow her on Twitter @ChrissyCole
