Urban Thought Collective

“He need his ass beat.”

That’s the first thing I thought when I saw the video recently of a man punching a girl in a South L.A. McDonald’s.

A teenaged girl, who posed absolutely no physical threat to a grown man, laid out flat … as if in a boxing ring.

No dialog can be heard on the tape but according to one news report here’s how it went down:

Two little girls go up to the counter to order. A little boy cuts in front of them. The girls protest. The boy’s father approaches the girls with another boy. The little girls’ older cousin steps in to the picture. Words are exchanged and the teenaged girl curses at the man. The man then tells her if she curses again he’s going to hit her.

Evidently she cursed a few more times because the man lets loose at least two punches and tries to get in a third before the girl is knocked to the floor unconscious.

I’ll say it again: he need his ass beat.

“Thandisizwe Chimurenga! Are you calling for violence as a solution to violence as opposed to non-violence? Are you calling for vigilante justice? Are you really calling for the physical assaulting of a Black man when Black men are already the number one victims of homicide and imprisonment, an endangered species?”

Ya damn skippy.

He need his ass beat in the middle of the street directly in front of that McDonald’s on Crenshaw Blvd. on the busiest day of the week during rush hour … by a group of Black women.

The news report of the incident features a representative of law enforcement saying they need the public’s help in finding the man so he can be “brought to justice.”

Most of the comments I’ve seen on this subject say this man should be turned in to the police. And, understandably, the majority of those comments are coming from Sistahs. However, justice, police and prisons are separate and very unequal things.

There used to be a time when incarceration was seen as corrective, hence the term rehabilitation. Prisons in America no longer even pretend to rehabilitate people. They are simply warehouses that contain the “undesirable” segments of the population. In so doing, obscene profits are derived through what we call the Prison-Industrial Complex (PIC) – profits that do not accrue to our communities, the victims of crime, or even the perpetrators of crime in the form of educational and rehabilitative programs.

Several years ago when I took a domestic violence certification course, the instructor talked about how, in nine cases out of ten, a Black woman in a violent domestic situation will call the police because she wants the violence to stop. She calls because at that moment, she is either being physically assaulted or threatened with physical assault. She does not call because she wants her abuser to be swallowed whole by the PIC, or to die in a hail of gunfire, although that is what happens on too many occasions.

This particular McDonald’s restaurant is not far from the City of Inglewood where police killed four people in about as many months. In Inglewood, the cops don’t need a semblance of wrongdoing as their excuse – all they need is for someone to be standing upright before they shoot them down.

Prisons and police exacerbate already existing problems. The punishment does not fit the crime.

“Well then, Thandisizwe Chimurenga, how could you possibly advocate violence as a solution then?”

Simple. It’s called “Community Corrective.” The Community says “what you have done is unacceptable, it is not a good thing, and this is the consequence for your actions.” Shame and ostracism play major parts of the “Community Corrective.”

And physical force also has a role.

I am not delusional. I know full well that our people don’t police/protect/correct ourselves no matter how hard I wish we did. And so, I will never, ever tell a Black woman who feels she has no other alternative not to call the police. I will wish and work hard as hell so she won’t have to, but I won’t tell her not to.

Part of that work is envisioning and dialoguing about what we would like to see in place of what we have. What would be a just punishment for the crime this adult has committed against this child?

How about this Black man, who takes his two young sons (who have just witnessed this attack) by the hands as he hurries out of the McDonald’s, how about he explains to them that what he did to that teenaged girl was wrong and as a consequence, he will apologize to her, pay her medical bill, and that he will accept an ass whipping from a group of Black women, just like he beats his children’s ass when they eff up?

And after it’s over, he goes on about his bidness. No retaliatory drive-by, no calling the police to file a report when it was his dumb ish that set it all off in the first place. None of that; just take your ass whipping like a man and move on …and don’t do that ish no more.

That’s my vote.

He need his ass beat …and so does anyone who tries to defend him.

Thandisizwe Chimurenga is a community journalist and activist. She can be heard most Thursdays on “Some of Us Are Brave: A Black Women’s Radio Program” on KPFK - Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles. She is also the Director of the Ida B. Wells Institute, a leadership development and media training program for Black women and girls. Her social commentary blog is exclusive to Urban Thought Collective.