The scared little boy in Will Smith - and me

A part of me was proud Will Smith did what a different part of me knew he was wrong to have done. He should not have slapped comedian Chris Rock. I’m not saying that as a fellow black father married to a beautiful black woman. I’m saying that as a black boy in a middle-age black man’s body who can’t shake the image of his black father’s fist landing on his black mother’s face as that little boy cowered in the corner frozen with fear. The part of me that isn’t convinced Smith was wrong was forged in dark days long ago, the kinds of days up to 15 million American children experience every year.

I grew up in a household where domestic violence was present like Smith grew up in a household where domestic violence hovered like a dark cloud. I grew up feeling like a coward for not intervening to stop my father from beating my mother just as Smith wrote in his recent book about feeling like a coward for most of his life, the roots of which stem from those days his father beat his mother and he felt powerless to do anything about it.

I don’t know if that’s why he foolishly walked onto the stage of the Oscars to slap Rock after Rock made a joke at Smith’s wife’s expense. Don’t know why he didn’t understand that displaying such violence was the coward’s way out. Don’t know why he didn’t realize, or care, some would use his actions to suggest it’s again ok to harbor racist stereotypes about black men and violence. Don’t know why he couldn’t foresee that he’d ruin the culmination of one of his biggest triumphs and the story of one of the most important families in America, a family that produced a couple of stars in a sport that had long been hostile to those wearing dark skin like theirs.

I know that scared little boy in him is alive and well, that it’s likely that scared little boy who did the slapping, not the well-reasoning man who became the world’s most bankable actor and multiple-time Oscar-nominee, and now Oscar winner. That little boy couldn’t protect his mother from his father. But he could protect Smith’s wife from an unkind joke about a medical condition. At least that’s the way the damaged part of me felt when Smith slapped Rock; he was slapping my father for me. And just for a second, it felt good. Righteous, even.

Because I know the scared little boy in me is alive and well more than four decades after cowering in the corner of the kitchen as my oldest brother pulled my father off my mother. I suspect Smith doesn’t know how to reconcile those contradictions in his head and heart any more than I do. Intellectually we know it makes little sense to beat ourselves up for feeling powerless to stop a powerful man – in the form of our own fathers – because we actually were powerless then. And yet our intellectual capabilities are not enough to overcome that lingering feeling of cowardice, inadequacy. That’s what happens to many young boys who watch their father beat their mother. We struggle for most of our lives to figure out who we are supposed to become. We live with a duality. It’s not toxic masculinity, but something deeper, more profound. It’s an irreconcilable difference forever stirring in our scarred souls.

We can’t be too soft. That’s not manly like our fathers were manly. Like all boys, we want to be like our fathers, want their approval. But we can’t be too tough. That would make us too much like our violent fathers. Like all boys who grew up in such households, the last thing we want is to be like our abusive fathers. We try to avoid such comparisons like the plague, even if it means suffering indignities in relationships we shouldn’t. We strive to love our wives in a way our fathers never loved our mothers but desperately want to protect them in a way we couldn’t protect those who gave life to us.

Researchers are coming to that realization, now understanding that the effects of a young child witnessing domestic violence can be just as bad to their mental health as being physically attacked themselves. In adulthood, we are more likely to suffer from PTSD. I don’t know if Smith does, but I was diagnosed with the disorder and still struggle to corral it.

Maybe Smith just snapped under the glare of the bright lights. Maybe he was coming off a bad night of sleep. Maybe he ate the wrong brand of cereal that morning. Maybe that’s why he did what he did. Your guess is as good as mine. But I know why what he did resonated with me, why it likely resonated with millions of others who’ve experienced or witnessed domestic violence firsthand. It’s a shadow we spend a lifetime trying to outrun but unsure it won’t follow us to our graves.