Some of youse may be late on this, but the video of hipster rapper Charles Hamilton getting popped in the jaw by his ex-girlfriend has been floating around the Internets for a minute now.
It starts off where most of these things kinda YouTube promo-farts start off—banal, self-serving. Hamilton decides it would be a good idea to engage his ex-girlfriend and assistant (WTF?) Briana Latrice (I know, right?) in a rap battle, which seems like some promising entertainment. Until, at about the 2:25 mark, while Hamilton is in the middle of a verse, she gets at him with a pretty decent right cross. I know the fight game, and lemme say that with just a little more precision? Briana could have knocked Charles Hamilton the eff out. Dude looks about a buck ten, and she probably got him by at least 20 pounds. At least. The video caused kind of a stir in hip-hop circles, and provoked a natural question: What Would You Do?
Not for nothing, the young lady apologized, saying that she can be "emotional" sometimes. UH-huh. Me and the homie Toure went at it on Twitter, my contention being that Hamiliton wasn't neccesarily a better man, but almost certainly a different man for not meeting violence with violence. Me? I'm a proponent of filing charges in domestic violence situations, and this Hamilton should have filed charges.
When I was young in the game — like, high school— I used to rock a boiling pot on my head with "KANGOL" written on the side, so I've been a fashion casuallity. But let's face it: A grown man walking around with pink headphones, a Sonic The Hedgehog T-shirt and a stuffed animal on his arm was probably going to get punched in the face by someone anyways, just on principle. But looking at the video, all jokes aside, I doubt this was the first time she'd hit him. Doubt it. Hamilton was not in shock or taken aback: instead, he reacted like someone who had been down this road before, and had a fairly routine response. They probably get down like this on the regular, and we have an incident of domestic violence on video —- where are the police? Where is the outrage?
Well, let me say that there has mostly been none. The girl is being hailed and Hamilton just looks a little more ridiculous than he may normally look. I've tabled a few suggestions about what men should do when attacked by women. To the extent that it happens —which, statistics suggest, may be more than we think—women have to stop attacking men, because it puts men in Charles Hamilton's place, where you have to ask yourself a question. Whether to hit a woman back isn't really the question. Rather, why is she taking a conversation to a place where a question like that is posited and has to be answered (in the self-defense) often in a split second?
The Charles Hamilton Question is, ladies, why is violence on the table, and when it is how do you reasonably expect men to repond?
Single Father, Author, Screenwriter, Award-Winning Journalist, NPR Moderator, Lecturer and College Professor. Habitual Line-Stepper