The Silver Lining Surrounding Ray And Janay Rice
By Kevin Ross II
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video worth? Apparently, a large amount of words if you ask Ray Rice, because the last video released will change Rice's life indefinitely, although the video produced no new evidence.
Those who haven't followed this situation carefully can easily think that Rice just recently committed this act. We forget that news first broke months ago in February that Ray Rice had struck his fiancé. The report was also accompanied by a video of Rice dragging his limp fiancé out of that elevator.
Yet even with all of this information readily available, the following events still took place: The NFL came down as lightly as possible on Rice, only giving him a two game suspension; the Ravens came down even lighter by not rendering any punishment at all, but instead offering support: "I stand behind Ray, he's a heck of a guy," said Head coach Jim Harbaugh. As training camp opened, Rice was given a standing ovation by Ravens fans. "I'm wearing his jersey because he is still a good man," said Debbie Lindling of Baltimore.
The Ravens stood proudly behind Rice, the city of Baltimore stood behind Rice, and his sponsors stayed put as well. But on Monday, when a video was released that showed us what we already knew happened, all of the support vanished. The Ravens, who have been overly supportive, immediately fired Rice, the NFL suspended him indefinitely, and the Ravens fans are now burning his jerseys in mass proportions.
So the question is, if we already knew the facts, why would a video change our opinions so much? To put it simply, America is ignorant to true domestic violence.
We all know the definition of domestic violence, but the truth is many of us have not experienced it or have not seen it first hand. What we saw in the video of Rice striking his now wife is, sadly, common place among victims of domestic violence. We hear that a man hit his wife, but most of us can't envision what this entails. This allows us to quickly brush off news of domestic violence and move on with our individual lives.
How else would you explain the overly supportive initial reaction to a man who admittedly KO'd his fiancé? Or how could you explain the lack of outrage for US women's soccer player Hope Solo who allegedly beat her her sister and her 17-year-old nephew?
Surely, if Hope was caught on camera viciously attacking her 17-year-old nephew, she would have received the same backlash that Rice is facing now. But the fact is, Solo was not caught on camera, and she is back to being heralded as a beautiful and terrifically impressive athlete.
And this is unfortunately America's longstanding position on domestic violence, where as long as we don't see it, we don't care about it - or at least we don't understand it enough to take action.
So if there is a silver lining around Ray Rice's actions it's this: Just as the ice water challenge made millions aware of ALS, this shocking video of Rice striking his fiancé has abruptly made many aware of what real domestic violence looks like. And being aware of a problem is the first step needed in solving a problem.
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Kevin Ross is a freelance writer covering all things Washington Redskins. His work can be found on Examiner.com.
