Revisiting that Ebony.com Piece on Bobby and Whitney

So yesterday I scored a big F on my reading of Ebony.com's piece on Bobby and Whitney. It happens. I usually catch such glaring errors before they are posted but not this time so I deleted the piece. Those of you who are subscribed to the Blog had it land in your inbox for all posterity (Ha!). I deleted it because I made claims that were unsupported by the text I quoted. However; this morning after sleeping on it I have come to the conclusion that though the text did not say what I claimed it did, the underlying sentiment that perceived is still worthy of examination.


The original piece and object of my scorn said the following:

Fifteen years ago, none of us would have guessed that in 2012, Bobby would be remarried, the father to a young child and (allegedly) sober for years and that Whitney would die alone in the Beverly Hills Hotel with Xanax and an uneaten turkey sandwich by her side. Many had hoped that the end of what seemed to be the toxic Bobby and Whitney marriage would signal the rebirth of the latter's career and her health. That was not to be the case.

I'm still bothered by this. Starting from the opening "None of us". None of us would have guessed that Bobby would be remarried, a father and allegedly sober? If "none of us" expected Bobby to be all of those positive things then what exactly did "all of us" expect? This is a serious question. I'm even putting aside the gross generalization of "none of us" because I certainly was not "expecting" Bobby Brown to have done anything because frankly I wasn't really paying attention to Bobby. Or Whitney for that matter. I still think that this is a case of low expectations of Bobby as a man, a black man at that. We "expect" black men to crash and burn *cough* DMX *cough*.

Now someone is saying that's a pretty hard charge to make. Sure it is but I think the next few sentences of that piece provides support for this. Supposedly "many", a far cry from the "none" had hoped that the break up with toxic Bobby would have been a rebirth of Whitney's career. Really? I suppose we could ask given the evidence presented in the opening sentence, WHO was toxic for who? If it was Bobby who, after getting the divorce, straightened up and flew right, can't we theorize that it was perhaps Whitney who was toxic for Bobby and that Bobby was the one who needed to get away so he could have a "rebirth"?

Of course we can't make such a suggestion in this environment because it is expected that the man must be the toxic one, the source of all the ills befalling a woman, because men are simply evil creatures and women are passive victims of them. I call this the "non agency argument.

Why couldn't "we" have hoped that when Whitney and Bobby got divorced that it would be an opportunity for rebirth for both of them since by not being together neither one of them could enable the toxic behaviors of the other.

But beating on Bobby is far easier to do than to place the responsibility of Whitney's behavior on Whitney. Such an ideology allows us to "expect" Bobby Brown (or any other man who has been deemed "bad") to not straighten up while hoping for the best for Whitney or any other woman who has been deemed the victim of a man.

So yes, I misread the piece originally and claimed it made statements that it did not, but the underlying ideology is there; and it should bother us.