Houston Woman Slapped with a Brick, and Bystanders Did Nothing

It’s the back edge of summer, September 2023. A Somali-American woman got slapped with a brick by a Black man in Houston. Bystanders, according to <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CwwJHh8Rxfx/?img_index=4" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Rho Bashe</a>, the woman who was assaulted, did nothing. There’s so much to unpack on this matter. Some angles I’ll observe will piss people off, while others will be largely agreeable. <h2>1. Protect Yourself Out Here</h2> You cannot expect people to intervene during an encounter of street violence. Woman, man, it doesn’t matter who you are. You simply cannot expect strangers to intervene in a benevolent manner. There are practical reasons why a bunch of folk — men — don’t interevene. For starters, they don’t know if they will be maimed, mutilated, or killed. It is difficult for people to consider a street violent encounter they didn’t start, their business. Sometimes, men feel like they are being manipulated when an unknown woman is in the middle of a street violence encounter. Some women out there explicitly start shit with a man just to have some other guy get into some shit. Even further, who is paying the good samaritan’s bail? Who is paying for that intervening man’s medical bills? People — strangers — are typically transactional because they don’t know you. They don’t have any emotional stake in your well-being. Because of this fact, strangers are highly unlikely to engage in a thankless violent encounter in the street. <a href="https://medium.com/afrosapiophile/rho-bashe-919cab52df10">Visit Now</a>