Scapegoating Domestic Violence

This article in The Guardian responds to Joe Hildebrand's interpretation of a recent Australian study on domestic violence. Hildebrand used the study to argue that domestic violence is mostly perpetrated by low-income and Indigenous groups, and that men are victims of domestic abuse just as much as women are. The author of the The Guardian article (Karen Williams) refutes this point by noting that the data in the study were taken from crime reports which over-represent poor and Indigenous populations because of discrimination and under-reporting. Additionally, she points out that white men with higher incomes and higher education were more likely to practice coercive and verbal abuse. Since these types of abuse are not technically illegal they don't get reported and so the picture that gets drawn from crime statistics that over-represent low-income and Indigenous populations.

This article is compelling because it highlights how powerful men scapegoat less powerful men. Hildebrand is a well connected and successful journalist which means that he probably has a fair amount of social and cultural power not to mention economic capital. He is probably not harmed by growing cultural discussions about domestic violence because of that power, and yet these discussions threaten him because he feels that they have the potential to topple the structures that have granted him much of that power (namely, racist capitalist patriarchy). In order to avoid this outcome, he misinterpreted a study and placed the blame for domestic violence on disadvantaged and minority men. In other words, he used poor and minority men's lack of power to prop up his own sources of power. He should be ashamed.