Chris Brown, Paris Hilton and Hip-Hop Notions of Justice

The phrase “only in L.A.” is often used to jokingly dismiss many of the city’s oddest bits of news: for example, the recent revelation that a murdered model was identified by the serial number on her breast implant.

And it is perhaps the only way to explain the recent ordeal involving R&B star Chris Brown – because truly, only in L.A. (particularly its courtrooms, when famous people are involved) would the courts be so forgiving of a young black man who committed a violent act.

It’s no bombshell that black men in America have the deck stacked staggeringly high against them when it comes to the justice system. In virtually every statistic imaginable, they’re the ones on the losing end: 32 percent of black males born in 2001 can expect to spend time in prison in their lifetime, compared with 17.2 percent of Hispanics and 5.9 percent of whites born in the same year. More black men have done time in prison than military service or earned college degrees. The list could go on forever.

Which is why it seems bizarre that Brown, who was arrested following a fight with his equally famous girlfriend at the time, Rihanna, would get off with probation, community service and domestic violence classes. Brown admitted assaulting Rihanna, and photos of her bruised and bloodied face that leaked onto the Internet made the gravity of his actions hard to ignore.

Compare that with Paris Hilton’s offense – the startlet was arrested in 2006 for drunk driving after blowing a .08, exactly the minimum level for a DUI in California. She spend 23 days in jail. Other celebrities like Nicole Richie, Michelle Rodriguez, Khloe Kardashian and Kiefer Sutherland also spent time in L.A. prisons.

Brown’s lack of real punishment is equally out of keeping with the notions of justice espoused by the hip-hop community to which Brown (loosely) belongs. Since it began, the genre has denounced how easy it is to get locked up – to “catch a case” as if it were a cold. Rappers shed light on racial profiling, corrupt cops and the poverty that forces many people into selling drugs to scrape by. It’s also a world that embraces community: Prison is seen as corrosive to families. Paul Waldman writes in “Let’s Get Free” that “Hip-hop culture embraces retribution, but not at all costs. If the consequences of making people pay for their crimes is the decimation of community, then retribution is more important. Punishment should be reduced when it harms people other than the criminal.”

But NONE of these factors were in play in Brown’s case. He wasn’t forced into beating up his girlfriend as a result of sad circumstances. He wasn’t set up by the cops. And since he has no wife or children depending on his income, sending him to prison wouldn’t have done more harm than good.

Brown’s recently been engaged in an apology tour that has taken him from People magazine to “Larry King Live.” He’s even groveled in song on the track “Changed Man.” But the fact that he went out partying the very night he was sentenced, and his flippant willingness to sing the mind-blowingly inappropriate lyric “put my hands on ya body” when he guests on the Ester Dean single “Drop It Low” belie is his real level of guilt. One of my fave writers, The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer, recently wrote on Twitter: “what bothers me about Chris Brown is he seems madder his reputation was hurt than he is sad about what he did.” I’ll go one step further: What bothers me about Chris Brown is that he isn’t sitting in Paris Hilton’s old cell right now.