First, I want to be clear, so there is no misunderstanding once we reach the nuance portion of what follows.

I do not believe it was OK for Will Smith to slap Chris Rock at the Oscars for making a joke that Smith felt mocked his wife.

Given that Smith has now apologized to Rock, it appears he would agree with that assessment.

Although Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith starring in G.I. Jane 2 was inappropriate and hurtful — Rock ad-libbed it unthinkingly, without regard to the emotionally and often physically painful condition that prompted her to shave her head — it did not merit striking the comedian in response.

This is not to say that violence is never acceptable.

I believe it can be in certain circumstances — for instance, in self-defense or vicarious defense against the physical assault of another. But this is not one of those times.

Surely it must be possible for men and husbands to land somewhere between how Ted Cruz reacted to the blatant disrespecting of his wife by Donald Trump and how Smith handled the disrespecting of his.

Surely there must be some space one can claim between pathetic and groveling acceptance, on the one hand, and slapping the shit out of someone, on the other.

Surely there must be some way that men, in response to slights against the women in our lives, can manage to keep the focus on the women who have been aggrieved, giving them space to respond as they see fit rather than placing focus on ourselves and our need to respond for them.

All that said, life is more complicated than those last several paragraphs can convey. So please stick with me for a bit.

When people act out of character, it’s good to explore what’s really going on

When someone with a history of aggressive or violent behavior does something aggressive or violent, perhaps we can assume they’re just assholes, reverting to type.

Even then, there’s usually more going on behind the scenes than just that.

But when someone with no such history does something like that, reasonable people ask questions before offering too many answers.

Of course, the temptation is not to withhold judgment, especially when celebrities are involved.

Our impulse is to weigh in on one side or another. In this case, it’s Team Chris or Team Will, which of course obscures the very existence of Team Jada, whose experience of the entire event has been largely ignored.

But watching the slap online, I was immediately curious even as I couldn’t agree with what Smith had done. Because when a man with no known history of this behavior does something like this, there has to be a reason.

And while that reason can’t excuse his actions, if we fail to consider it, we miss a big part of the story and whatever lessons it may hold for us.

By avoiding the more substantive questions, we end up limited to garbage takes like those of Judd Apatow or Mia Farrow, the first of whom suggested Smith had lost his mind and deserved to be sued into the stratosphere, and the latter of whom likened him to every powerful man who ever hit someone.

Or worse, the take of Dr. Emily Porter, sister of Congresswoman Katie Porter.

According to her, if Smith had slapped Betty White that way, it might have killed her — a suggestion that ignores two things: first, although Smith played Bagger Vance, he is not so “magical” as to resurrect the already-dead and then slap them, and second, he would never have hit Betty-fucking-White.

Neither would White or Bob Saget — whose implicit resurrection and then death-by-slapping Porter also conjured — have made a joke about Jada Pinkett’s hair or lack thereof.

So yeah, we need to dig deeper.

We might begin by remembering, as Roxane Gay pointed out in her brilliant piece in the New York Times, how Will Smith has written about his feelings of powerlessness to protect his mother from his abusive father.

We might wonder, without endorsing his actions, how that history could have contributed to the hijacking of his amygdala on Monday night.

And there is more.

Looking at Twitter reactions to the slap, I couldn’t help but notice something that might be implicated in Smith’s behavior but which has gone largely unremarked upon.

It was everywhere, hundreds of tweets and memes, mocking Smith for supposedly being angrier about Rock’s joke than he was about his wife’s relationship with singer August Alsina (at a time when the Smiths were separated), about which Will and Jada have spoken, bravely and publicly.

These were tweets and memes challenging his manhood and questioning his marriage. Unfortunately, it’s a narrative that has been prominent since Jada Pinkett Smith’s relationship with Alsina was publicly revealed in 2020.

As a side note, the Smiths have denied Alsina’s claim that Will approved of Jada’s relationship with the singer. It’s also worth noting that even if they did have an open relationship, that would be their business and say nothing about Will Smith’s manhood.

But that’s not how dudes who fantasize about beating other guys’ asses just for following their girlfriends on Instagram think about it.

Once guys like that insult the manhood of another repeatedly, it can bring the latter to the edge, and then all bets are off.

Within a patriarchal society, hyper-masculinity is often a reaction tochallengedmasculinity. To dis a man or “his woman” (noting the problematic nature of that concept) can easily provoke this kind of reaction in many otherwise non-violent individuals.

That doesn’t make it acceptable. But it makes it predictable.

And it reveals that the issue goes deeper than Will Smith.

It’s a cultural concern that calls into question how men are socialized — both to insult other men whom they view as insufficiently alpha and to respond aggressively to any man who disses them or their partner.

There was more than personal history playing out on that stage

Smith’s reaction to Rock’s joke also suggested the working out of a psychodrama that touches on a history much older than Will Smith’s relationship with his wife, his career, or indeed his very existence.

You could hear this history as the background noise to Tiffany Haddish’s comment that what Smith did was “the most beautiful thing” she’d ever seen because it made her believe “there are still men out there that love and care about their women, their wives.”

Putting aside the problematic notion that men have our women whose supposed fragility necessitates protection from all things — not to mention the highly arguable suggestion that ratifying male violence ever works out for women in the end — I think there is a subtext to what Haddish is saying.

And this subtext is worth considering, especially for white folks who I know (from 53 years as one) don’t often consider it.

Namely, the history of America is one in which Black men, in particular, have been consistently disempowered when it comes to defending themselves or their families.

It happened when they were split from them, their children and wives sold away.

It happened when their ability to provide financially was circumscribed by economic marginalization and discrimination.

It’s still happening with a justice system that has long focused disproportionately on their misdeeds rather than those of others.

And that history may not have consciously entered Will Smith’s mind at the Oscars, but it’s part of the cell memory of Black men across America. Though perhaps not visible, its scars are there if you know where to look.

These are men whose manhood and humanity have been repeatedly challenged, first and foremost by white supremacy and then by other Black men who too often turn on the only persons upon whom they are allowed to vent their rage and frustrations — other Black people.

This is why Will Smith could think of slapping Chris Rock, but you cannot imagine him doing the same if Billy Crystal had told the joke.

(For that matter, it’s also why one can’t imagine Chris Rock telling the same joke about Nicole Kidman if she was experiencing alopecia).

Whether on the streets or the Oscar stage, the drama unleashed is more than the sum of an individual’s choices. It is the cumulative result of having long been stripped of efficacy, of experiencing hopelessness in a nation whose principal product is the peddling of dreams.

And even a man making over $20 million per film cannot easily outrun a cycle of intergenerational trauma — or his own, for that matter.

Money does not change the message running through one’s mind. If anything, it can actually make the voice louder, creating a dangerous mix of imposter syndrome and the need to prove one’s toughness, precisely because the money has afforded you options and a kind of comfort your forbears lacked.

And because the self-doubt implanted deeply by your own history and that of your country can render you unable to believe or trust any of it, even as you cash the checks.

Again, none of this can justify what Smith did.

But if you do not know that history — have never even contemplated it and what it can do to those against whom its weapons have been deployed — you are not ready to enter this conversation.

This is why we as white folks must come to understand the Black experience and what white supremacy did and still does to call into question Black masculinity, the legitimacy of Black families, the permanence of Black love.

It’s why we need to be in authentic relationships with Black people.

All the books and trainings on these subjects will never substitute for meaningful human connection.

That connection is all that can allow us to understand why Rock’s joke was so hurtful to so many Black women in particular. And it is all that could even remotely enable us to comprehend the soul wound in response to which Black people have persisted and thrived despite its severity and against all odds.

People like Will Smith. And Jada Pinkett Smith. And Chris Rock.

Yes, we can expect better of the first in defense of the second and in response to the third.

But so too must we demand better of our society and insist upon a deeper understanding of how its history continues to shape us all, however much we deny it or think that professional success insulates some Black folks from it.

Because life is more complicated than that.