Folks couldn’t even wait for the body of Kasandra Perkins to be lowered into the ground before they started blaming her for her own death. I don’t know if horror is the right word to describe the coverage of Kasandra Perkins death by mainstream media, Black blogs and Black Twitter. Almost immediately the discussion on Black blogs turned to what Miss Perkins must have done to cause her own death.
Meanwhile, mainstream media is conspiring to make sure that Jovan Belcher isn’t held responsible for Miss Perkins’ murder. They are working overtime to attempt to make her murder about traumatic brain injuries instead of the controlling bullying and entitlement bred by sexism and misogyny. The focus in mainstream publications is NFL concussions and the headlines on the Black blogs will be child support and Trey Songz concerts instead of maternal homicide and intimate partner violence.
In other words-> Let’s Blame Concussions and a Dead Woman because we don’t want to acknowledge sexism and misogyny and we certainly don’t want to hold a young Black male millionaire responsible for his own actions. Lucky for you, you don’t have to rely on or accept the mainstream media narrative.
According to the CDC, black women have a maternal homicide risk about seven times that of white women. Black women ages 25-29 are about 11 times more likely as white women in that age group to be murdered while pregnant or in the year after childbirth. http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-4009249.html
Go tweet about THAT!
Not twice as likely. Not Three times as likely. Not five times as likely, but ELEVEN times. Miss Perkins was just outside the 25-29 age range. Victim Blaming 101:
The Kansas City Star reports that Jovan got into a heated argument with Kasandra around 7:50am stemming from her arriving home at 1am following a Trey Songz concert.
OH dear. SHE went to a Trey Songz concert. SHE arrived home at 1am. SHE caused a heated argument. Other articles make it a point to mention that Miss Perkins was drinking while she was out with friends and Mr. Belcher called her several times to inquire about her whereabouts. Oh dear, a woman over the age of 21 who had arranged childcare went out with friends for a concert and consumed alcohol- oh the HORROR!
Then came the stories about how GREAT Jovan Belcher is. how no one saw it coming.
“Jovan was a happy, proud father, with pictures of his baby on his Facebook page,” Jovan’s agent Joe Linta told SI.com’s Peter King on Saturday Dec. 1. “This is shocking. Something went crazy wrong, and we’ll probably never know what it is.” http://hollywoodlife.com/2012/12/02/jovan-belcher-kasandra-perkins-fight-shooting-trey-songz-concert/
OH he must have SNAPPED. She must have done something to “push” him over the edge because HE could not possibly be a controlling murderous bully.
Then came the outright defamation, obfuscation and redirection. Deadspin published a hit piece courtesy of an anonymous “friend” of Mr. Belcher.
I won’t post the defamation here, you can read the article over on Deadspin where everything from her college transcript to her employment record is used against her.
The friend wanted to stress that the concert was, at most, a tipping point, and that the relationship had soured previously. In further emails, he was frank that his aim was to give us Belcher’s side of the story, and in defending his late friend he came off as cruel toward the murder victim, going so far as to call her “the catalyst.”Deadspin
Wow!
SHE was the catalyst? HE had no control over his action because HE probably had a TBI- oh no it has to be concussions that are responsible….ANYTHING other than Jovan Belcher was a controlling bully who felt entitled to shoot his girlfriend.
Because mind you, Mr. Belcher managed to not kill his mother who was in the next room. He managed not to kill the security guard at the Kansas City Chief’s stadium. He managed not to kill his coach and the team manager. So were these some special “concussions” that only affected the part of the brain that deals with girlfriends?
In 2008, ESSENCE magazine asked me to write an article about Dorothy Dixon. Dorothy was a mentally disabled Black women who was tortured and killed- and by tortured I mean for months, knives sticks, cuts, burns and they also used her body for target practice. The coroner pulled out dozens of BB gun pellets that were embedded in her skin. She was pregnant and had another child who was an infant. ESSENCE’s angle was that when pregnant Black women are tortured and killed, mainstream media doesn’t cover it. While the deaths of pregnant White women, such as Laci Peterson, get covered for years.
In the course of writing the article, I had to do an ton of research on maternal homicide. New and expectant Black mothers were killed in the most gruesome ways. Almost every single case! We’re talking baseball bats, being buried alive, duct tape. Mr. Belcher shot Miss Perkins 9 times! Many of the girls I wrote about were teenagers killed by much older boyfriends. That was newsworthy in and of itself, but the fact that so many of them are dying -11 times as many- should have cause some type of community-wide outrage and campaigns— but crickets. I finally concluded that we didn’t want to cover the genocide on new and expectant Black women and girls in order to protect teh precious:
I point out the difference in response to Black women and girls being slaughtered and our community’s never ending quest to preserve young Black men. http://www.whataboutourdaughters.com/waod/2008/8/19/essence-magazine-highlights-dorothy-dixon-and-other-victims.html
I should have added AT ALL COSTS.
If you’re shocked that Miss Perkins is dead, you shouldn’t be. Because she was a Black woman in her 20s with a child of less than a year old, statistics tell us that she was at a relatively high risk of being murdered by her child’s father. ELEVEN TIMES more at risk of being murdered because she was a Black woman and almost certainly to be blamed by certain segments of the Black community for her own death. You won’t read this anywhere else but HERE.
For any reporters or bloggers that would like to write something DIFFERENT about this story, please do consider doing something called “research” by typing in “maternal homicide” and “Black women” into Google. I know Google searches are incredibly difficult, but try and stretch yourself.
Here is a summary of the CDC’s report on Homicide in new and expectant mothers.
So in closing, because I can never say this enough, the person responsible for Kasandra Perkins’ death is Jovan Belcher. There was nothing Miss Perkins could have done to cause Mr. Belcher to murder her in cold blood. He pulled the trigger the 1st, 2nd, 3rd,4th,5th,6th,7th,8th, and 9th time he shot her.
This article was re-blogged from What About Our Daughters – Unapologetic, Uncompromising, and Unbowed in Defense of Black Women and Girls.
