Domestic violence is not a racial issue

A man named Lekan Fawmi was arrested this month on charges he killed his wife, Ebonetess Davis.

This is where he and I are similar: He’s 32. I’m 32. He lives in a state ranked sixth for its rate of domestic-violence deaths. So do I. He’s black. I’m black.

If he’s guilty, this is where we differ: I don’t beat and won’t stab my wife to death.

I say it that way because only bluntness works when trying to explain why there’s insanity in dividing people into racial categories to determine who is most likely to commit a crime.

Such categories suggest if we know the person’s skin tone, we can accurately predict his or her behavior, as though circumstance and free will – and a host of factors beyond our imagination – have little to do with the choices individuals make.

I felt compelled to write after South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster recently said there is a disproportionately high rate of domestic violence in the black community in South Carolina. He said non-white women are up to three times more likely than white women to be battered.

That analysis means nothing to the white woman I wrote about last year who was beaten bloody from the top of her head to bottom of her feet, or the white woman found by police in a tub filled with her own blood – or to my wife and the majority of black women who face no such threats.

But that doesn’t mean everything McMaster said should be ignored, or that his intentions sprouted from an ill place.

Maybe some men believe it’s more acceptable to beat and rape black women, particularly given that on average perpetrators who attack black women are given lighter sentences than those who attack white women. Maybe McMaster plans to change that.

And maybe the notion that domestic violence is a “black thing” – or a byproduct of poverty or illiteracy – makes women who happen to be white or educated or rich more reluctant to report such abuse. Maybe that puts them at greater risk, even if that risk is masked by self-reported statistics.

Race plays a role in just about everything we do – the good and bad – though it doesn’t cause blacks to act uniformly in one fashion and whites in another.

It’s wise to not allow the complexity of domestic violence to be overshadowed by simplistic sound bites about race – but wiser to not ignore any potential factor driving abuse before thoroughly considering it.