"'B****** Fighting" the Troubling Trend Among Some Young Women

The term "'b******fighting" is what some women privately call a pier room brawl that a pack of girls or young women engage in with one another. The term and the behavior is loathsome and offensive. But it was that sort of brawl that claimed the life of 23-year-old Shontae Blanche, and even more shockingly, her seven-month-old unborn child. The young expectant mother and part-time student was killed when another young woman allegedly ran over her and dragged her.

Blanche had tried to break up a fight between a dozen women at a service station in South Los Angeles in early November. The women were young, black, and reportedly some had ties with gang members. They had gathered at the station to battle it out following a dispute between two of the women.

The altercation did more than claim the life of a young mother. It tossed the ugly glare on an age old problem that has grown worse in the past few years. And that's the escalation in violence by and among young women. A decade ago the Center for Women's Policy Studies published a landmark study on girls and violence. More than one third of girls they surveyed said that they had engaged in physical fights within a year's time. Nearly 20 percent said they carried weapons. And nearly half said they believed that girls were nearly as violent as boys. A Justice Department study found that from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s the number of women jailed for violent crimes had more than doubled.

A decade later the willingness of more young women, especially black women, to resort to fisticuffs and even weapons to settle disputes or commit crimes has become an even bigger problem. Girls Inc., a non-profit advocacy group that monitors violence by and toward young women, found that far more black girls were injured in school fights than white girls. The spiraling cycle of violence that entraps many black girls was on naked and tormenting display last year when nine black girls were hauled into a Long Beach, California court in shackles.

The girls were charged with a violent hate crime attack on three young white women on Halloween night in 2006 in Long Beach. The sight of so many girls standing trial at one time on a charge, especially the hate crimes charge, was rare. But the sight of so many black girls in a court docket and increasingly in America's juvenile jails and prisons has become anything but rare.

Black women in some states are being imprisoned at alarming rates. And they are being jailed at younger ages than ever. An American Bar Association study in 2001 found that teen girls account for more than one-quarter of the juvenile arrests. They are charged with more violent crimes, and are being shoved back into detention centers after release, in some cases even faster than boys.

The ABA has not done a follow-up study since then to determine if there's been any change in the troubling dilemma so many black girls face in the juvenile system. But, almost certainly, the high arrest and incarceration rate for black teen girls is likely the same if not greater today, and many of them are there for violent crimes. They have engaged in physical fights and assaults, and even school yard brawls with other girls, or even boys.

The explanations for the up tick in female violence are varied. The near glorification of the male code of toughness to get ahead in business, politics, and sport has virtually been enshrined as a prized virtue in society. Women have not been immune from it. There's the bloat of gladiator spectacles such as WWF matches with women tossing each other around in a ring, posturing, swaggering, and cussing like drunken sailors, and bar-room toughs. The toughness virtue has even slipped into politics. In polls, women by big margins said the thing they admire most about Hillary Clinton is her toughness.

Many young black women are continually exposed to violence in their communities. They have ties with male gang members, they themselves are members of gangs, or they have committed assaults. The Center for Women's Policy Studies also found that many of the women that engaged in physical fights have been victims of rape, assault, or robbery. This further imprints the tacit stamp that violence is the pervasive method to control, dominate, bully, and gain advantage over people and situations.

There's a double dilemma for the girls and young women that commit violent acts. The risk is great that they can be maimed, killed or wind up serving a long prison stretch. And since violence is still thought of almost exclusively as a male preserve, there's a near total absence of studies on the causes and consequences of female violence. That means even fewer resources, programs, and support outlets to keep at risk girls and young women out of harm's way and from harming other women. The Blanche killing is tragic proof of that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and Hispanics (Middle Passage Press)

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Comments

[MsLiz]

Historically, men have been the fighters and women tended the home fires in time of war. Now, women are losing limbs and dying overseas and College Republicans give excuses for not enlisting. Have our changed expectations of young women filtered down to the level of the neighborhood cat fight?

[leftofnorth]

Not one posting here addresses root causes. Instead, we get idiot trolls ("ha ha. isn't funny when lib'ruls get upset over hate speech. ha ha. my IQ is smaller than my shoe size. ha ha") and people who accept statements of rising violence and societal problems without once questioning sources or methods.
Here's a question, for example: if violence among some girls is rising, is it because they're girls or because they're poor, inner-city and of a minority group? All of these are proven risk factors for adolescent violence.
What about hopes and dreams? Multiple studies (Beuf, 1974; Lupashek & Yewchuk, 1998) show there is a huge gender gap in expectations of opportunity and results; to put it simply, boys still believe they can do anything while girls still believe they can become moms. Another poster was absolutely correct in saying what's considered overly-agressive in a girl is just fine in a man.
Sorry for the rant, but "what's wrong with girls today" articles really set me off. I'm the father of 4 girls, and the only thing wrong with them is the screwed up society I'm raising them in. And just so the koolaid drinkers know, it's not us "lib'ruls" who are screwing up the world today. I'm also a military historian and psychologist, and the fact we just had a holiday supposedly to "never forget" the lessons of war, while little girls and boys around the world are dying horrid deaths in the name of corporate profits and conservative ideology also pisses me off.
But that's another rant.

[suki21693]

The fact that young women are growing more violent is merely a reflection of the society as a whole. It is perhaps an indication that we approach the final step on our road to total barbarism. Trying to examine this phenomenon outside the context of our entire civilization (including men who have consistently led the race towards brutality) is analogous to trying to contend with the inherent negativity of gansta rap by castigating only black youth for listening to it.

[jesbillings]

"The toughness virtue has even slipped into politics. In polls, women by big margins said the thing they admire most about Hillary Clinton is her toughness." This statement is bizarre on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin.

First, toughness has been a virtue in politics as long as politics has existed. Second, to compare street brawling with Hillary Clinton's 'toughness' -- which, in a man, would be called strength, competence or independence -- is insulting and ludicrous.

The escalation of violence among young women is alarming. But publishing ridiculous assertions such as this isn't going to help.

[1will]

As for female gang members fighting each other, I doubt much can be done to stop that. People don't generally join gangs in order to be polite, productive members of society.

[1will]

Why are more women in general fighting each other? I doubt it's because they are emulating men. Our society has changed and common sense and decency are no longer respected or even expected. I believe this is even more true (sadly) in the black community.
Unlike in the past everything an individual now does is ok. He/she is just expressing him/herself. If you want to talk loud in a movie theater, talk on a cell phone in church, bring a screaming baby into a movie then 'it's all good.' A woman flipping up her top is no big deal and if she wants to act like a whore then she just asserting herself. Men are no longer expected to act like gentlemen and women often don't have a clue how to act like ladies. The social taboos are quickly fading away. Why should women fighting be any different.
As for my earlier statement about this is being especially true in the black community, blacks get the added benefit of screaming racism whenever their behaviour is questioned. Recently at my daughter's school some young black boys were caught smearing feces on a restroom wall. This has been going on for months and finally someone was caught in the act. Did the boys parents punish them and apologize in embarrassment for their kid's behaviour? Nope, they somehow blamed it on racism and protested their kid's punishment. Children are growing up with no expectations on how to behave.
It doesn't end in public school. Look at the youtube videos of any Ann Coulter speech at a college. Granted, Ann Coulter is not for everyone's taste but how sad is it that Mamoud Amadinijad can speak without interuption at Columbia yet Ann Coulter, The Minutemen and most Conservatives have to fear violence from Liberal college kids.
Bad bahaviour crosses all ethnic and gender lines but most groups don't have the benefit of crying racism as justification for their actions or as a defense when being chastised.

[oldpotsmuggler]

The War on Drugs is implicated in so much of what is screwed up in our society. The violence clearly belongs in the criminal justice system, but plenty of folks have a skewed view of the criminal justice system because evryone they know has been through it for something at some time. What, maybe 80% of that exposure has come as a result of something having to do with drugs? We simply cannot afford to continue making entire lifestyles illegal, and making large groups of people look upon themselves as being criminals. Or, even worse, as somehow being among the people that the rest of society has declared war on.

And then there's the whole gang thing, and the fact that the money resulting from the illegality of drugs is the glue that, more than any other single factor, allows gangs to stay together. Almost every one of the thousands of gang members that I ran across in my eight years behind bars (and this includes Hells Angels, and Mafia, as well as Crips, Bloods, Jamaicans, Central Americans, etc.) had at least some drug counts in their case.

Legalizing all drugs won't be a miracle cure for all that ails society, but it would clearly be an important first step for allowing much of the healing to begin.

[Nommo]

Kinda like "last hired, first fired", this is. Gangs and gang violence are as American as cherry pie, to quote an elder. Unfortunately, the illusion of equality is an equal opportunity killer.
American culture has glorified the Klan and its offshoots, organized crime of all stripes, and the history of this nation is rife with mob/gang goings on. How many people know more about the OK Corral than Teapot Dome?
Now we reap the reward of our struggles for "equality", we get to act like the gang worshipers but without the ignorance of so-called law enforcement.
It is the back door approach to reinvigorating that old American favorite, slavery. Maybe it is a front door approach, who knows anymore?