NY BLM leader Hawk Newsome used to slap, punch, choke women: 'My love was toxic'
Hawk Newsome, 43, who is one of the most influential Black Lives Matter leaders in New York, has admitted in public that he used to physically abuse women because he had grown up in a cultural milieu that glorified misogyny. Newsome has been in the news for the past few years for various reasons, including a heated interview to Fox News that went viral, where he said if BLM protesters didn’t get what they wanted, “They will burn down the system.”
“We don’t want white people coming in and raising our rents. You can’t be a supporter of black people if you come gentrify their neighborhoods. Stay the f–k out of our communities," Newsome later told New York Post, near Yankee Stadium. He is the father of a teen son, William, who lives with him, and has a four-year-old daughter, Assata from a former partner, who has not been named in the reports.
Culture 'promoted misogyny'
In November 2018, Newsome spoke at Nuyorican Poets Cafe, opening up about why he chose to abuse women in the past. "Gonna open up to you. And this is something that's incredibly hard for me to do. You can judge me if you will. I mean I guess I deserve it. This is the music that I listened to growing up. 'F**k b**ches, get money, money over b**ches, b**ches aint s**t, but hoes ain't tricks, pimps up, hoes down, beating motherf**kers like I beat Tina. After I hit her, I am through with her. There's nothing left to do with her. Pass it to the homie. Now you do her,'" he said.
He also listed movies like 'The Godfather,' 'New Jack City,' 'Casino,' 'Goodfellas,' and the James Bond series where women were disrespected and abused in various forms. "Everything that I glorified growing up promoted misogyny. Most of my favorite music and movies were filled with violence and mistreatment of women. This is the culture and now we are beginning to change that culture... Misogyny and violence against women has been handed down generation to generation... although my dad never hit my mom, I saw relatives who I love dearly beat their wives. Violence against women is culture and it extends back thousands of years. I make no excuses for my actions and I acknowledge the circumstances around my actions. Hitting a woman is a choice. Belittling and berating women — these are all choices that I made," he added.
'My love was not love at all'
He continued: "Hitting a woman was okay as long as it was 'justified' by her cheating on you or her disrespecting you in some sort of way... A thing that we would say was, talk like a man, get beat like a man. It's f**ked up but that was the reality. I am here to tell you that the way I grew up and what I promoted was wrong. It was all wrong. I was told by one of the smartest women in the country that, 'If you feel you need to hit a woman then you need to let her be free of you.' But that's not how my love worked. My love was toxic. My love was controlling. My love was terrifying. My love was not actually love at all."
He explained how therapy and God eventually helped him overcome his toxic mentality against women. "I would make excuses for screaming and yelling. I would make excuses for fighting and physical violence against women... But there are no excuses. You know what you are doing; you're doing it... if you are toxic you need to step away, so that she can be free of you. If you feel like you need to hit a woman then you need therapy, meditation, and God is how I healed. The problem was that I was a man who was an all-American athlete. I had tons of women. I was an alpha-type and I trained myself to suppress my emotions, only releasing them when I drank," he said.
He also briefly touched upon his alcohol addiction and the fact that he was sober. He said that God helped him to see the right path and to realize that his oppressive way would one day kill him or lead him to take the life of someone he loved. "I have never beat a woman within an inch of her life. However, I have used physical violence against women. And this I know now is unacceptable. I used to slap, I have choked, punched... I could have done worse. I was on a path to do worse. However, I sought help and put the work in to liberate myself," he said. He also said that he was also helping other men and women who have faced domestic violence to liberate them.