Thoughts on the Chris Brown-Grammy Awards controversy

This week’s Grammy Awards were overshadowed by the death of Whitney Houston, but even the shock of her death didn’t stop people from talking about Chris Brown. His performance and nomination was the subject of some controversy before and after the ceremony. Performing nearly three years after his assault on then girlfriend Rhianna, the Twitterverse was buzzing with tweets from supporters and opponents of Brown. I saw the same blog reposted on my own Facebook newsfeed over and over by friends who have nothing but disdain for Brown, and the Grammy’s for letting him perform.

What grabbed the most attention wasn’t Brown’s actual performance (which some critics panned for the heavy lip-synching), but for the decision to allow Brown perform at all. Then there was this compilation of 25 tweets condoning Brown’s actions. Here’s a sample:

It’s not my purpose here to try and contexualize these comments; they speak for themselves. They’re stupid, immature, and terribly ignorant. But I found it curious that people looked deeper and saw them as reflective of some kind of gross acceptance of violence against women. To what extent this is true is debatable. The simplest explanation though is that these people are just idiots. What people forget is that the internet is filled with morons. Ever read the comments section on IMDB or YouYube? 25 comments all hoping Chris Brown will beat you is small potatoes compared to some of the things people write on those sites. I defy you to get through any of them (seriously, look up Israel/Palestine or Justin Bieber and see what racist, anti-Semetic and homophobic things people write). The fact is the internet is the most democratic and pro-free speech environment on earth, and like it or not, this unfortunately leads to a lot of people posting a lot of ignorant things from time to time. 

Now as for Brown’s performance, my question is if it’s not okay for him to perform at the Grammy’s, where can he perform? At what point is he allowed to have a career? His crime was horrible, and I’m not defending or condoning it. Rhianna did nothing to deserve what happened to her. But some facts need to be addressed here: he pleaded guilty to felony assault, met the conditions of his sentence, and apologized repeatedly, both in public and in-person to Rhianna. (The question of whether or not he got a light sentence isn’t the issue, but if you want to point the finger at someone for this, it’s the judge and prosecution you should take issue with). Also, it should be pointed out that Brown has had a clean record ever since the incident (unlike serial wife-abuser Charlie Sheen. Read Alex’s excellent post on this from last year). 

So what is left for Chris Brown to do? Should he forever be prohibited from recording or touring? Which award shows are acceptable for him to perform in and which aren’t (he performed at the BET Awards in 2010, but didn't receive the same backlash interestingly).

To some extent, I sympathize with Brown’s opponents, many of whom probably think this incident should have killed his career, but are also genuinely upset at what they think is some tacit acceptance of violence against women in our society. We only need to look at things like the Shafia murder case to be reminded of the terrible cost of misogyny. But let’s not scapegoat one man for a problem that is far more complex. Allowing Brown to perform at the Grammys does not condone violence against women, and shutting him out won’t solve the problem either.