If you’re reading this, then chances are, you probably watched Real Housewives of Atlanta or a frantic clip from Sunday’s episode.
Glen Rice Jr., the nephew of Tammy Browning, who is the friend of Cynthia Bailey, pushed down his aunt when he and his friends were invited back to the house the ladies were staying in while in Miami.
It all started so innocently. Or something like that (maybe “freaky” is the better word). The ladies and Rice and his friends were all on a boat, drinking (a lot) while playing Never Have I Ever. We learned a lot about the sexual habits of them all. (And in the exclusive extended scene, we found out who has eaten the booty like groceries, who has paid for sex and who has given and been given a golden shower. A lot of mental images Lord knows we didn’t need.)
Things did get awkward at one moment during the boat ride when Kenya Moore snapped her fingers at Rice to get his attention. When he told her that she “damn sure” wasn’t snapping at him, she took his response as a joke and claimed Rice was a “spicy” guy. In the beginning, it was something that she seemed to like.
But in no time flat, Rice went from spicy to just drunk and irritable. Back at the ladies’ house, he snapped at Kandi Burruss for not having the response he assumed she would display after he congratulated her on her pregnancy. He told her that he was willing to play nice with folks as long as they weren’t disrespectful to him, and said he didn’t want anything to do with her. Though she was visibly annoyed and confused by his response (“Did I have an attitude?”), Burruss decided to keep her mouth shut because she’s pregnant, and she didn’t know what he was capable of with all those drinks in him: “He might be crazy.”
Rice finally took himself to the hot tub, where most of the ladies were soaking and having fun. And during that time, he proceeded to call everyone “b—h a–es” and act up in general. Moore felt that his behavior was getting more and more aggressive, so she decided to tell Browning that her nephew needed to leave.
In an intoxicated state, Browning told her nephew that he and his friends would need to go. And when Rice asked Moore what her problem was, that’s when things really went left.
Sure, she could have ignored him and allowed Tammy to try and escort him out, but she decided to tell him straight up why he needed to go, saying, “I’ve been trying to talk to you all day. You’ve been really weird. You’ve made other people feel uncomfortable here. I just want you to leave.”
That’s when he went to Moore, calling her a “little b—h” multiple times. And when security stepped in to calm him down, as did Browning to hold him back, he pushed his aunt to the ground. She hit her head and was rendered unconscious. She had to go to the hospital.
And somehow, all this was Kenya Moore’s fault.
I think we can all agree that Moore is one to stir the pot and then play victim often on the show. But let’s be honest, Rice was out of control. Blame it on the alcohol, blame it on his personality, blame it on whatever–but don’t blame Moore for that.
And while we’re on the subject, Phaedra Parks, please, let’s not compare him to Mike Brown.
I think it’s a very serious issue, the misplaced fear of Black men. And yes, some people see a threat in young Black men that is really just false intimidation, and things escalate in dangerous ways. Police are called. Guns are pulled out. Lives are lost.
But there are some situations where that fear is not misplaced, and where some men do things that are truly out of control. As Jodi Walker of Entertainment Weekly put it, “we do need to protect black men. But we also need to protect black women.” Just because we’re all Black doesn’t mean that when we feel someone is acting up, we can’t ask them to leave and just hope they’ll oblige as an individual with good sense. And just because we’re all Black doesn’t mean that we as women should sit back and take whatever happens to us. What sense does it make to look out for everyone but ourselves?
Instead of taking Moore’s opinion for what it was and just agreeing to disagree and leaving the premises, Rice got upset and made things worse. And as more drinks flowed, who knows what would have happened if he had stayed and someone said the wrong thing to him? For him to even feel comfortable enough to fuss with a pregnant woman, he clearly had zero f–ks to give.
I think people’s irritation with Kenya Moore as a character on TV causes them to fail to be able to relate to her, and the decisions she makes, some decisions that are made in the interest of looking out for self and others. And that includes her castmates, Phaedra Parks, Porsha Williams, Sheree Whitfield and Kim Fields, who all felt that she was creating a problem where there wasn’t one. And considering that Whitfield saw the way Rice talked to Burruss, and left the house after the altercation, I was surprised at her response. But as Burruss reminded everyone, “Tammy was knocked out for a few seconds. That could’ve been either one of us. He was way to [sic] aggressive for no reason.”
And during that time that Tammy was on the ground, her nephew was not preoccupied with her condition. It was the rest of the women who were there, cleaning up his mess, trying to provide her with some aid. The same women who turned around and said he didn’t seem that bad and that things were blown out of proportion.
We need to stop trying to clean up the mess of men who “didn’t seem that bad” before they did x, y and z. We need to stop trying to provide a scapegoat for grown men with misplaced anger and aggression that they feel so comfortable displaying with women. We need to stop talking about what “we didn’t see on camera” and focus on the fact that we did see a grown man shove his own family member to the ground (so he really wouldn’t have cared about strangers). We need to stop acting like just because something doesn’t happen to us, it means that the discomfort other individuals feel around someone means nothing.
And we need to stop trying to use people we don’t like, and the so-called provocation they show (a.k.a., just being themselves) as an excuse for individuals putting their hands on people. No “He was bad, but…” excuses. Kenya Moore may be a character who is hard to like, but she didn’t push Tammy Browning and knock her out cold. Who she is on TV is fakity-fake, but the violence we saw play out in a few seconds flat was all too real.
