Source: Jacob Wackerhausen / Getty
A video of a Black woman in Houston who was allegedly bashed in the face with a brick by a man she rejected has gone viral and sparked outrage and discussion.
As reported by Madame Noire, in video shared on TikTok, influencer and “junior scholar and former journalist” Rho Bashe posted a clip that showed her brutally beaten in the aftermath of being attacked by an unidentified man with a brick. Bashe tearfully details that the man who attacked her did so because she declined to give him her phone number. “Y’all, this man just hit me in my face with a brick and all these Black men just watched. This man…grabbed a rock and hit me in my face because I wouldn’t give him my number,” she said.
Bashe then started yelling at the onlookers for not taking any action and letting the man leave unbothered. One of them responded, “What did you want us to do?” after the Houston woman yelled at them. “I want you to be a man and do something. You gonna let a man hit me in my face?” she responded. In a follow-up video, Bashe is seen in a hospital gown in tears, with a large swollen lump on the right side of her face.“How is this okay? This is what y’all doin’ to women?”, she said.
The video has gotten numerous views on social media and spurred trolls who’ve cherry-picked videos from Bashe’s account to try to claim that her past actions justified the attack. This has led others to come to her defense, including author Candice Marie Bonbon who wrote a thread on X, formerly Twitter decrying the ill behavior: “Men searched her socials and are using her clips (she’s a feminist) to justify why men shouldn’t have intervened. This is truly hell.”
Bashe posted a follow-up video on TikTok on Tuesday (September 5th), stating that she has endured “a lot of bullying and bullshit” since she posted the original videos. She stated that her assailant “jumped in a car with a bunch of Black women” before getting away. “Y’all know who he is. Put him out there,” she pleaded. “Center his face and then talk about it because he’s the one that got to make a choice. I didn’t get to make a fucking choice.” She would then go on to thank everyone who amplified her story and defended her.
