What If We Just... Didn’t Revive the Chris Brown Forgiveness Discourse?
By Stacy Lee Kong
Image: Marvel
Content warning: This newsletter contains references to intimate partner violence, and some context links include descriptions of physical abuse.
I am forever asking my friends if I’ve already told them something, so it’s kind of weird that there’s this one conversation from 2009 that I still remember in surprisingly good detail. It wasn’t that long after news broke that Chris Brown had violently assaulted Rihanna, and I was talking about it with a group of friends. I remember telling the group how Brown’s then newly-hired lawyer had gone on CNN to talk about how he became involved in the case, saying his first reaction to getting the call was to wake up his teenage daughter to ask, “who’s Chris Brown and what’s a Rihanna?”
I insisted that this was, if not a deliberate rhetorical trick intended to dehumanize her, then a subconscious indicator of who gets taken seriously and who is dismissed when we talk about abuse. My female friends all nodded along as I talked, but one of the guys in the room insisted I was overthinking. This was a Stacy of a different time, one who didn’t always feel comfortable pushing back when people disagreed with her, so I was proud of myself when I insisted that I wasn’t overthinking and that whether this lawyer had chosen those words deliberately or not, language that undermined Rihanna’s personhood made Brown’s actions easier to overlook.
That was years before I even thought about pop culture commentary as a thing I wanted to do, but I was already trying to understand and articulate the way celebrity doings reflect what’s happening in the world at large, and how the conversations we have about those doings can literally shape the way we see and react to these situations in our actual lives, too.
And I’ve been thinking about all of that—whose feelings, experiences and futures get prioritized when we talk about abuse, and how some conversations back then created a sense of distance between what Brown did and who he did it to, and whether that’s happening again now—a lot this week.
ICYMI, the AMAs are still a thing… and they sparked a new Chris Brown conversation
That’s because, on Sunday night, Chris Brown won an American Music Award for Favorite Male R&B Artist but wasn’t there to accept, so the presenter, Kelly Rowland, accepted on his behalf amid loud boos from the audience. “Excuse me—chill out,” Rowland told the crowd before saying, “I wanted to tell Chris, thank you so much for making great R&B music. And I want to tell him thank you for being an incredible performer. I'll take this award, bring it to you. I love you. Congratulations. And congratulations to all the nominees in this category.”
Some backstory: Brown and Ciara had been scheduled to perform a tribute to Michael Jackson to mark the 40th anniversary of Thriller, but just ahead of showtime, Brown posted a Reel to his Instagram saying the AMAs cancelled the performance “for reasons unknown.” So, he stayed home, hence Rowland’s acceptance on his behalf.
The internet instantly began speculating about why the tribute didn’t air—the most popular theory I saw was that it’s just terrible optics to have a convicted abuser celebrate an alleged abuser, which... yeah, but some people also wondered if it was because his ex, Karrueche Tran, would be attending and Brown’s presence would violate the restraining order she’s had against him since 2017.
By Monday afternoon, Dick Clark Productions, which produces the AMAs, sent a statement to ET clarifying that the tribute was pulled over creative direction and the decision didn’t have anything to do with Brown. “Live shows change all the time, it’s the nature of this business,” the statement read. “Unfortunately, this element of the AMAs didn’t come together as we couldn’t align on the performance, to no fault of Chris Brown.”
But it was kinda too late—the story only picked up from there. Later that day, TMZ caught Rowland going to her car and asked her about Brown. Her reply: “I believe that grace is very real, and we all need a dose of it. Before we point fingers at anybody, we should realize how grateful we are for every moment that we get, even for our own [problems] that we have. I just think it’s important to remember to be human. We are humans. We all need to be forgiven for anything that we could be doing, anything that we’re thinking. We all come up short in some sort of way. And grace is real, and we’re all humans. And everybody deserves grace. Period.”
The same day, Ciara posted a clip of her and Brown’s rehearsal with a supportive caption: “MJ thank you for the inspiration you’ve given us all! Thriller 40th Anniversary. @ChrisBrown you’re a rare breed of this generation. Always fun to rock with you.” And on Tuesday, Jordin Sparks weighed in, telling TMZ, “We love Chris. He should have been there. People deserve to be able to grow and learn and be able to live their life without things hanging over them. Everybody deserves that … him especially.”
Other artists, including Jermaine Dupri, The Game and Jacquees, also came to Brown’s defence, but much of the internet discourse has focused on the women who are supporting him. This is definitely because people believe they should be siding with other women or that they should know better—especially Rowland, the thinking goes, because she has been physically abused by an ex. (She revealed her abuse on her 2013 song, “Dirty Laundry.”)
Who does—or doesn’t—forgive Brown is beside the point
But… I actually don’t think it matters if Rowland, Sparks or any other individual supports Brown, regardless of their race, gender or past experience with abuse. First, as writer Da'Shaun L. Harrison pointed out on Twitter this week, simply experiencing intimate partner violence doesn’t automatically give someone a perfectly developed political position on abuse, so it’s not like Rowland’s opinion ‘matters’ more than someone who hasn’t had that experience.
“There’s no need to bring up that [Rowland is] a survivor of DV to make the point that she is wrong. Survivors can be messy, imperfect, and wrong without having their abuse thrown back into their face,” they said. “It’s not cognitive dissonance because, contrary to newly popularized belief, being a survivor does not mean that one has a good or developed politic around sexual/gendered violence… Being a survivor isn’t an identity nor is it a political position that means anything more than you’ve experienced abuse. There is no perfect victim, only violent institutions and the complex experiences we have under them.”
And maybe that’s because ‘forgiveness’ isn’t even the right framework for this conversation. Yes, people deserve space for learning and growth, but here, those concepts are actually being used to create that sense of distance that I mentioned earlier. It might be worth remembering exactly what he did to Rihanna the night before the 2009 Grammys—the police report from that night spells his actions out in disturbing detail. (That was also the third time Brown got violent with her, which I don’t think many people remember.)
We should also acknowledge that everyone who talks about forgiveness is only talking about Rihanna, but Brown has displayed a whole pattern of behaviour since then. He had a “meltdown” after an interview on Good Morning America that saw him smashing a window with a chair, got into a physical altercation with Frank Ocean, allegedly assaulted a woman at a San Diego nightclub, threw a rock through his mother’s car window, allegedly assaulted another woman at a Las Vegas party, allegedly threatened to kill another ex, Karrueche Tran, who was granted a temporary and then permanent restraining order against him in 2017, punched a photographer at a nightclub, allegedly sexually assaulted a woman at his home and allegedly stalked and harassed a 24-year-old woman named Cassandra, among other instances of violence.
This is why it doesn’t even matter that Rihanna has forgiven him. I’ve heard many people say that we don’t have the ‘right’ to hold a grudge against Brown because his actual victim has moved on from his abuse, but that’s not really how we should be judging public figures. Whether Rihanna forgave him or not is not my business because that’s about her process of personal healing. What is my business is how I feel about Brown after learning about these recurring violent episodes and whether I choose to support him (by listening to his songs, buying concert tickets, buying the products he endorses, etc.) despite them. I personally can’t, especially since I don’t think I’ve ever heard him express real regret about his actions or talk about trying to get help. Which I think makes sense because we don't stop supporting abusers only when their victims are mad or don't forgive them; we stop supporting them because of the abuse.
We should actually be talking about how the music industry—and society at large—overlooks abuse
The abuse should also be the key factor in deciding whether someone gets professional and societal support, too. But let’s be honest, that’s not how the music industry works. In fact, it has always functioned as a safe haven for abusive men. It might actually be impossible to name every musician, manager or record exec accused of domestic violence, but here’s a short list of icons who used to physically abuse their partners: John Lennon, James Brown, Miles Davis, Ozzy Osbourne, Dr. Dre, Biggie, Ike Turner (whose horrific abuse of Tina Turner became a line about sexual satisfaction in “Drunk in Love,” btw, in case you wanted even more proof that the biz doesn’t take this seriously). There are also entire listicles of men in the music industry who victimized teenage girls. And, according to investigative reporter and filmmaker Tamanna Rahman, the #MeToo movement seemingly bypassed this sector entirely because that’s how the industry wanted it.
“The problem is that many record labels do not even seem to try,” she wrote in The Guardian earlier this year. “If you are making your way into the industry, the likelihood is that you’ll work for an independent record label. If you’re assaulted by the owner of that company, or the artist, then who can you go to to complain? There are often no HR structures in place, and even where they do exist… the response [to complaints] has ranged from being gaslit, ignored, threatened with lawsuits, required to sign NDAs or quietly let go.”
Meanwhile, if you’re producing work that sells, you’re even more likely to be allowed to abuse people without any consequences. Just look at how long R. Kelly was able to get away with grooming, trafficking and exploiting young Black girls, something he could only do with the complicity of a team. Or the fact that Kesha has been forced to continue working with Dr. Luke for years after accusing him of raping her in 2005. Or, you know, the career Chris Brown has been able to have, even after exhibiting abusive, misogynist behaviour for more than a decade.
This is also why I don’t think it’s fair to focus on the individual actions of Black women when talking about Brown. As Stephanie Hinds argued this week, we see far more vitriol “when Black women offer grace to Chris, while others get let off the hook of public outrage fairly easily. Recently, Normani caught a lot of heat for working with him on a new song. Yet, when Usher called Chris a ‘legend’ in October, there wasn’t nearly as much criticism, and people have stayed relatively mum about his collaborations with several other A-listers.”
But Brown's label, RCA Records, has gotten relatively little heat for continuing to work with the singer, which to me indicates a few things: they don’t see his behaviour as incompatible with their company values. They don’t worry about exposing their employees to an abuser. And, most importantly, they don’t believe his history of abusive behaviour will have financial repercussions for them. (RCA is the same label that took until 2019 to sever ties with R. Kelly.) So yes, it’s not great to hear Rowland talk about Brown deserving grace—especially if you are also a survivor of abuse—but does anyone actually believe that her commentary to TMZ could spark more change than a demand from his label that Brown meaningfully address his past abuse and take steps to make amends?
At some point, this conversation has to evolve beyond whether Brown deserves absolution for assaulting Rihanna or if other celebrities deserve scorn for supporting him and actually grapple with the message it sends when the music industry doesn’t just accept this type of behaviour, but actively rewards it with bookings, record deals and literal awards—and what that says about how we treat abusive men as a society.
And Did You Hear About…
The New York magazine journalist who covered the Christmas movie industrial complex from the inside—meaning, she worked as an extra on a Melissa Joan Hart-directed movie that’s airing on Lifetime this month.
This ode to Wednesday Addams.
Comedian Vidura Bandara Rajapaksa, whose bits on colonization in particular are 👌🏽
Writer Alanna Bennet on spending a month in Italy this summer, how it helped her burnout—and why it didn’t fix it.
Friday Things’ third annual gift guide, which definitely includes gifts that reference Uncut Jahmmmms, Beyoncé and Bridgerton.
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