Hey, everyone, this is part two of our episode about Robin Gibbons. If you haven't listened to part one yet, I recommend starting there. Just a note that we discuss sexual and domestic violence in this episode. It's September thirtieth, nineteen eighty eight, and Robin Gibbons, a well known actress, is revealing on a national television interview.
He's got a side to him that's scary. That she is tormented by her husband's physical.
Abuse and just recently, I've become afraid, I mean very very much afraid.
Her husband, the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Mike Tyson, is sitting beside her quietly, Why.
Are you doing this interview? What you wanted people to know?
I don't want him to seem like a bad guy.
The couple is speaking to Barbara Walters to tackle a swirl of rumors around their marriage, but Robin's honesty in this moment is going to backfire and the public reaction to her intimate revelation will change the course of her life.
Is Evana Kerm and I'm Jessica Bennett.
And this is in Retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us.
And that we just can't stop thinking about today.
We're talking about the vilification of Robin Gibbons, a talented actress who in the nineteen eighties became known for her violent marriage to Mike Tyson. But we're also talking about the way she was treated by the press, what it teaches us about domestic violence and the role race played in all of it.
This is part two.
So, Susie, we're talking about this remarkable interview which has now just aired. How does Robin feel about it after they finished taping.
So initially, Mike and Robin and the people around them view the interview as a success.
You know.
Robin writes in her memoir, which is called Grace Will Lead Me Home that afterwards they all went out and celebrated and were really happy with the result.
But then what was the public reaction to the interview?
So the reaction is wild. Even in the run up to when they air it on September thirtieth, there's you know, a few days usually between an interview and when it actually gets edited together and put on television. During that period, ABC News leaks parts of the interview. I mean, I assume it was ABC news. I guess someone else could have done it.
But purposely.
Yeah, that's pre standard practice and television, right, you're gonna pre internet.
Yeah.
They're releasing parts of it.
Yeah, or they're not releasing the actual video of it, but they're letting people know that this is going to be a big interview worth watching, So they're leaking little pieces of what was covered, and the tabloids go crazy. Right, they're already following every twist and turn in this relationship, but at this point they're even more aggressively invested in kind of what comes next, and there's a lot of speculation, and I think the thing that becomes clear here is
that the public opinion is really turning on her. Right, Like, there was already this idea that she was going to take all the spark out of Mike Tyson or whatever.
The hell she was just in it for a month.
Yeah, there was already these sort of like spurious rumors about her.
At this point, there is this sense that she's humiliated him with this interview, that by her saying that he's abusive while he's sitting there watching that that's a humiliation that's undeserved somehow. I mean, it's hard for me now looking back on it, to kind of understand this public sentiment.
I mean I keep asking you, like, wait, what do you mean they think she's humiliated him? Like it is so crazy to watch this now and think to yourself, oh, god, she's really humiliated him. I mean, like, what you see
here is an extremely raw description of a woman describing abuse. Yeah, and it's really wild that that was the public reaction to it, Like, it says so much about the time, and so actually I wanted to ask you, can you give us a little bit of context about our understanding of domestic violence at the time, because it was not what it is today.
Yeah.
It's an interesting thing because a lot of the way we understand domestic violence now really started with stuff that happened in the nineteen eighties around this timeframe. I mean, obviously, wife beating as it was described was formally illegal in the United States by nineteen twenty, but you know, arrests remained very rare, and it wasn't until the nineteen seventies where feminists started to really recast domestic violence as a major issue.
Yeah. Actually, this was when MS magazine, which was run by Glorioustein and put domestic violence on its cover. It was the first magazine to do that. I randomly know a lot of this history. And it was an image, a full bleed image of a woman's face with a black eye. She was a famous model and so she was recognizable, and the headline was battered wives. And so
this was exactly what you're saying. This was when the idea of abuse and domestic abuse was really starting to trickle out into the mainstream.
Yeah, that cover really demonstrates this moment where a shift is occurring, almost in real time, where women are starting to say, like, these are real issues. There needs to be real legal repercussions for the language for it, language for it. But look, we're in eighty eight when we're talking about this. The Violence Against Woman Act isn't even passed until nineteen ninety four, and that is sort of the first act that acknowledges domestic violence and sexual assault
as a crime and entrine's protection. So we're really at a very early understanding. And what you see is that Robin doesn't really benefit from that. Like it's not like we see all these feminists come forward to defend.
Her right and support of her.
Yeah, so I wanted to get the perspective of somebody who could put this into historical context for us, but also who lived through it.
So I called up Salamisha Tillett.
She's a Pulitzer Prize winning critic and a professor at Ruckers. She also grew up watching Robin Gibbons like I did on Head of the Class.
Here's what she had to say.
You know what's interesting about Robin Gibvens is that her public disclosure not only predates me too Right as like a global movement, but it predates other people coming forward with allegations against Mike Tyson, like Desiree Washington or other mainstream allegations of violence against women that we see later on In nineteen ninety one, the same year, Deserte Washington comes forward with allegations of sexual assault with Mike Tyson. In the fall of that year, Anita Hill comes forward
with allegations of sexual harassment Clarence Thomas. So Robin Gibbons is in a way an island unto herself, but also she's like a canary in the coalmi. It's just really important for us to go back and kind of understand, like what was the discourse around violence against women, violence against black women in the eighties and early nineties, and then how did that language that the public narratives impact little girls like me and you were watching it.
For those of you who don't know the story about Desiree Washington, we'll talk more about that later. But Salamisia is making such an important larger point here because what happens between Robin and Mike Tyson tells us a lot about how violence against women is seen in this era, and it tells us a lot about how racism is part of that conversation.
Right, and not only in how Robin was treated, but in that whole sort of like beauty in the beast portrayal of the two of them, right.
Yeah, And actually Salami Siha talked about that, you.
Know, Mike Tyson was to call him like beasts to the beauty. He's already castigated as someone who's like not fully human. So there's a racist element to how he was perceived, how people talked about his boxing, how people talked about his childhood, and how people saw him in American society. But I also think there's like racism towards Robin Gibbons, where like black women are not seen as victims of violence right.
Salamisha also said that these historic biases, these myths are part of the reason Robin wasn't believed.
The same myth of black men being hyper violent that comes from slavery. Also, there are myths of black women, you know, being jezebels or whorerors that like legitimated the violence against them during slavery as well. And so you have these two myths that are just circulating and international imagination. And you have Mike Tyson, who is physically much stronger than Robin Gibbons, and you have her saying publicly that
he's abused her, and he doesn't refute it. So all of that is true, and yet people still didn't believe her. So there's a lot of like mental gymnastics that one has to do. When even the person who's being accused of the violence doesn't say it didn't happen, it just speaks to like, one, how little we actually value the truth of violence against women, particularly violence against women in
homes and in marriages. But then two, the layer of him being an African Recan man and her being an African Recan woman, I think adds a kind of confusion I think on the part of how the media is going to deal with it, Black women aren't seen as people who are potential victims. They're not delicate, they're not fragile. We're superhuman in a different way, and so when we say that someone's attacked us, we're actually seen as people
who are unattackable and therefore unbelievable. It wasn't just Mike Tyson, I think, being a victim of racism, and therefore he's seen as hyper violent. But Robin Gibbons probably was never going to be seen as someone who could have been a victim, given this history of race and gender in America.
So, Susie, I know we'll hear more from Salivation later, but I want to take us back to the timeline. So the interview airs and the public reaction is not good, and then, if I'm remembering correctly, Mike Tyson begins to completely unravel.
Yeah, So once the interview airs and the reaction is that it's like a humiliation for him, he completely loses his ship. A couple of days later, he had as such an intense meltdown that the police are called to their New Jersey mansion. He's literally throwing furniture through the windows. I mean, the marriage at this point is essentially over. And Robin has told this story about kind of the moment where she realizes she can't stay in the marriage anymore.
He's having this extremely violent sort of rage that's going on four hours, and she and her mother and her sister and some other staff are hiding in a closet off the kitchen, desperately like trying to keep themselves safe from him, and she looks down at her sister, and her sister is just weeping, And in that moment, she says, she realized that she's not just putting herself through this,
but that she's putting her family through this. And she decides that they have to leave, and they flee to California. So within a week, Robin files for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences and spousal abuse. And in that divorce petition, she really does not hold back. She asks for a restraining order. She says, my husband has throughout our marriage been violent, physically abusive, prone to unprovoked rages of violence and destruction.
She describes this incident in the house the most recent incident in which I was physically terrorized occurred on October second. I was awakened by Michael hitting about my body and my head with his closed fist and open hand. She's and I think it's like worth remembering the disparity in their sizes here.
Ye, exactly.
All spousal abuse is terrible, but this is the literal heavyweight champion of the world and she's talking about his closed fist like that is his punching hand.
Yeah, she literally says, it's the latest in a continuous horror story for me. He has repeatedly hit me, thrown things at me, threatened to kill me, and threatened to kill my sister, my mom and employees.
Wow, it turns so quickly.
It's like they're on that show to supposedly rehabilitate or show that they love each other.
And that he's still God died like a leading into that, and then she's like, you know what, No, this is not a good guy.
Well, it just explodes.
He's violent and actually, interestingly, even as she's filing this petition, her attorney still says to the press she loves Mike Tyson, but there is continued violence and she fears for her safety.
So I mean, I think that's always been clear, Like that shouldn't be surprising. It is possible to love someone and for them to be a terrible, horrible abuser.
Right, Well, I think it's actually common, right, Like, most people do love their abusers. That's why they put up or it's like a twisted form of love, or they believe it's love. That's what your abuser is using against you often is sort of that knowledge that you don't want to leave, but that they're going to push you and push you and push you until maybe you don't feel like you have a choice.
And that seems like is what happened here.
And at this point, Mike reacts by waging open war on her, So she unleashes this anger in him that he now begins to feel comfortable taking out publicly, Like we know he's been taking out this anger on her, you know, privately.
Oh, so he's now just like, but.
Now he's just talking so much shit about her in the press. He counter sues her.
Oh, he counter sues her.
Yeah, he fils for an annulment in New Jersey, which, unlike California, doesn't have a fifty to fifty split. So he's basically like implying that she filed in California for the money.
He charges that she.
Tricked him into the marriage and that she waged a campaign to publicly humiliate him, grip him of his manhood and his dignity, and to destroy his credibility as a public figure. I mean, he has now decided that she is the enemy, and he is someone who when he decides that you're the enemy, really leans into that in an extremely aggressive way. So initially she says, I'm going to walk away from this marriage. I don't want anything. But he is so joh meaningless about her and relentless
in the press. He says that her miscarriage was false. He claims she was never pregnant, even though she says he had seen ultrasounds. He says about her and her mother, And this one I think is the most shocking. They don't like black people. In an interview with The Sun Times Chicago. Sometimes they use them, but they don't like or respect black people.
They want to be white so bad.
The way they talk about black people, you'd think you were living with the Ku Klux Klan.
Wow.
Right.
And so I think there's also this thing that he is tapping into, which is in the Black community. He is a real hero, right, so she is seen as betraying people to some degree, and he is really giving a dog whistle to that by claiming that she's essentially a white supremacist.
I mean, it's so interesting because it reminds me of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. Yes, and the way that he used the language about a very public lynching exactly, and that was just a few years later. It's almost as if this sort of not payd the like, I don't know what the right terminology is, but there is some reflection of this.
Yeah, you see echoes of the same kind of thing, which is there is this struggle in the black community where even with Bill Cosby, I think there was initially a lot of pushback when people came forward because the idea was like, we don't have that many heroes, you shouldn't denigrate them, even when they've done something that deserves to be called out.
Mike Tyson was a rare African American man who had reached the kind of the apex of his profession.
That's Almi Shatilada again.
And so that need, that desire, that hope to protect his status I think comes at the expense of someone like Robin Gibbons. So you have two African Americans, arguably both at the peak of their professions and then these accusations of violence. And so because of America has this long history of lynching and attacking African American men who are in high profile positions, there is a sense that
we have to protect this person at any cost. The other part of that, of course, is there's an African American woman here who is also a victim of racism, a victim of sexism, and when she speaks out about violence against her by this man, she suddenly doesn't have a racial identity. She's no longer seen as a victim. She's seen as someone who's in cahoots with American racism to take him down. And so that's the tragedy of the Robin Givens Mike Tyson situation.
It really must have felt so dehumanizing for Robin to just be stripped of her identity in that way.
Yeah, And the crazy thing is he just continues to give these interviews. He calls her slime of the slime. He says she tried to kill him with the drugs at which one he's talking about lithium, so there's obviously trying to kill him with the drugs. She eventually gets so frustrated she sues him for defamation and she's like, he accusing me of trying to steal his money.
That's not true.
So she's trying to fight that, and then eventually she just is like, I can't do this with you. She just drops the suit and their divorce is finalized, ironically on Valentine's Day of nineteen eighty nine, almost exactly a year after they were married.
Wow.
Okay, so the divorce is finalized. You know, hopefully she gets a moment to take a breath. This sounds absolutely awful, but the public sentiment doesn't really change, right, Like, is there any to me? It's like, there's no doubt in my mind that she was abused, But do people believe that or they still after all of this, are like, no, she's just going after his reputation.
People seem not to believe that.
And what's crazy about that is that he does actually admit it. So he has for many years denied it. He denied it at the time, he denies it for many years afterwards.
He didn't admit it.
In the Barbara Walders interview, right, even though she's sitting there next to him describing it.
Yeah, he doesn't admit it.
And to be clear, when you listen to the tape, which you know, we played at the top of episode one, she doesn't exactly admit it either. That's why her divorce filing is seen as such a big step, because she's sort of dancing around it too. You know, he shakes, he this, he that, but she stops short of quite saying that he hits. And I think that is what he leans into. Although there is this one thing that
comes out that's so interesting. So while they were married, this friend of his, this fellow boxing champion Jose Torres, is working on a biography of him and he's interviewing him for months. So he's just a friend who's turned into an author and they're just doing these series of interviews. And I think Mike is used to just like cutting it up with his friends. He doesn't really think about
what's going to be in this book. When the book is released, you know, just a few months after their divorce is finalized, it includes a passage where Mike very clearly admits to hitting Robin.
Oh wow.
And it's something Mike said when they were still together and this sort of press storm hadn't started yet, so he probably didn't realize it was okay, it was like before he would have caught himself. Yes, And he probably doesn't think that Torres is going to put it in the book. I mean, this is a friend, and this is the passage. Torres asks him about the best punch he'd ever thrown, presumably thinking he's going to refer to a punch in the ring. Yeah, obviously, and Mike smiles and tells him
I'll never forget that punch. It was when I fought with Robin in Steve's apartment. She really offended me, and I went, bam, holy shit, and wait, let me finish the passage because it's doesn't get better. And she flew backward, hitting every fucking wall in the apartment. That was the best punch I've ever thrown in my fucking life.
Wow, Oh my god.
Right, So you would think that's horrifying.
Yeah, it's absolutely horrifying, And you would think that when this book comes out suddenly the public turns on him and rallies around her.
Was that line, you know, pulled out and covered the way that it would be now.
I don't know if it's in the way that it would be now, and that it was pulled out and covered, but it was just drowned out by all the other noise.
Right. Well that's the thing too, It's like so much has happened now they're divorced. Like how many people who believe that she's an evil witch actually read this line or are reading the next bit of tabloid cover?
Sure, and I think jose Taurus doesn't have a lot of incentive to really do a big push on this particular part of the book because again, it's meant to be a friendly book. This is his friend who's given him all this access, so you know, whereas now, if you were marketing a book, you would make sure to pull that out and make sure that was in every interview.
I think that's not really what happens.
Well, that's sort of fascinating too. It's like that they didn't think that that was such a big deal, right, It.
Just seems wild. And there's other things in the book that are also really disturbing. There's a passage where he says, I like to hurt women when I make love to them. I like to hear them scream with pain, to see them bleed. He gives me pleasure. This is what he's willing to admit to someone.
Was there any way that Robin could take that and use it in her defamation suit?
At this point, she's dropped all that.
I guess the divorce had already gone through.
Right, She's dropped the defamation suit.
And like, was it?
It's like this guy should have been a witness in the divorce proceedings.
Yeah, totally. I mean she couldn't in the end.
The book didn't come out until all that stuff was over, but it would have been helpful.
Okay, So Susie, let me just take us back for a moment. We started this episode by saying that at some point Robin becomes known as the most hated women in America, but we haven't exactly talked about how that happened.
Yeah, So that particular title, which is very specific, obviously comes about through a couple of things. There's the original Barbara Walters interview, which obviously we've gone through all the backlash to it. Then the day she files for divorce CNN's Newsnight, and I think this really reveals how the story is starting to cross over from tabloid to mainstream press runs two poles. On October seventh, they ask who's
at fault in the marriage breakup? Mike Tyson or Robin Gibbons, which again like, let's just take a moment, like they're asking us on TV, yeah, on CNN, like to just take a moment to like how crazy that is? And ninety three percent of the callers say it is Robin.
Oh, so people actually call in to answer yeah, so yeah, so retro and seven percent say it's Mike.
So just to give you an idea of how much public sentiment is against her. And then I guess because of the success of that pole. On October tenth, they run another pole, should Mike Tyson be granted an annulment because and at this point he's counterfeit her to annul the marriage? And ninety two percent of people say yes, which also makes no sense. I mean, there's no grounds for an annulment. And there's also some pole that USA Today's television show. I guess they had a television show
at the time. Should she get any of his money? Ninety six percent people say she doesn't. So these polls are cited in a lot of the media coverage that comes after it. And then Robin actually sits down with Barbara Walters again, so this time by herself, after the divorce has been announced, and in the introduction to her, Barbara Walters informs her at this point that she could perhaps qualify as the most hated woman in America.
Oh wow, so she says that line.
It's still qualified, right, you could perhaps be the most hated woman in America. And then I think this is what really solidifies it.
Right after that, there is this Chicago Tribune peace.
This is all like within a moment in October.
Wow, Barbara Wilders interview happens, She fils for divorce, the divorce doesn't go through. She then goes back on Barbara Walters. Then the Chicago Tribune piece comes out. All these polls are happening in the back of the.
Background, right, And what happens here is that the Chicago Tribune is syndicated by a lot of other papers, So a lot of people see this column and this article has the headline most hated title to Robin Gibbons.
Okay, And side note, when an article is syndicated, that means the reporters of the Chicago Tribune wrote it, and then it gets published in like every newspaper across America.
Yeah, so this is a very widely read article. It's just FYI written by a woman, which I feel they need to tell you for obvious reasons. And this includes the CNN polls as the initial evidence for why she's the most hated. But then it has this line, in spite of giving up any claims on Mike Tyson's money, the soon to be ex MISSUS World Heavyweight Champion is the unequivocal holder of the most Hated woman in America title. So I think this is the line that kind of
solidifies this idea. And then she goes on to sort of interview all these famous or somehow she finds relevant people about why they dislike her so much, and there's this quote from the woman who wrote Dear Abby, which is perhaps the most famous, the most famous advice in America America, and this is what she says. I see this big, strong, muscular guy who's really a marshmallow inside. It seems like he's the one who's been abused. I'd say he's been had, and that's why he's getting all
the sympathy for all of his World Championships. I think he was naive. Like does that not just s blow your mind that someone who could have watched that same interview that we watched would think that he was just the sweet marshmallow, Like it's just really hard to wrap your head around. And then the reporter talks to this divorce attorney and this is what he says, Mike Tyson has one of the most prestigious titles in the world. And the way she talked about him in that interview
with Barbara Walters turned my stomach. It was the most incredible put down, and I see put downs every day. And the way he put up with that mother, that's another reason why people side with him. These people just manipulated a poor, ignorant guy. They obviously used him for his money. Here she is this beautiful college graduate. The guy is less than intelligent and less than attractive, which is also just like gross to begin with. Why is
he insulting Mike Tyson while he's defending him. It feels like racist that he's talking about how stupid and unattractive Mike Tyson is. There's nothing in this that doesn't actually turn my stomach. But you know, this is how people felt about it at the time. This is like a reflection of the public sentiment. And there's one other detail in this column which I think is much more common now but was relatively unusual then, which is people have
started wearing free Mike Tyson. Oh wow, Okay, yes, so I guess it to be free from a woman who's filed for divorce against him, Like, I don't even understand that.
The other thing is so wild is the headlines from this time. So you had pulled all of these headlines, our researcher, I pulled all these headlines together, and I was just skimming over them and thinking to myself, Oh my god. It's like they've taken the boxing terminology, and they've also taken the terminology of domestic violence, and they've made puns out of it. Yeah, so let me just read your these the Philadelphia Daily News. A lot of this is coming right in October and November of nineteen
eighty eight, when all of this is blowing up. The headline is taking a few swings at Robin. Then there's another one from like a small town paper that says, knocking Robin. Another one from Fort Myers News, blow by blow Colin Robin and Mike's year, Like.
Yeah, really, it's so gross, And also you can just see how clever that these headline writers must think they're being, Like it reveals sort of just like this cat a leer kind of jokey way in which this was discussed.
And then the other thing too, is that all of these articles begin by repeating what you have just described to us, that most hated woman in America line. So they will say things like, well, headlines proclaim her the most haated woman in America, and it's like, well, you are the headline. Yeah, you are claiming her, yes, And actually, this whole description you've now taken us through is such
a crystallized version of how narratives take yes. It's so fascinating from like a narrative media perspective, because it's like, yeah, one person says one thing, and then a newspaper picks it up, and then it gets syndicated, and then every other article just keeps repeating it and regurgitating it until it sticks. And so ultimately there's this People magazine cover with a photo of Robin and the headline is why
does everyone hate me? And it's like, well, because we've literally been saying that everyone hates you.
Right, it has a real impact, right, the real world impact impact. At one point, Robin tells Essence Magazine that during this time, a woman walked up to her on the street and yelled, he should have kicked your ass.
I wish he would have killed you.
Wow.
Okay, So that's like the pre Internet version of like all of the hate sent it women who speak up on Twitter, except that you actually have to walk up to the person and say it to their face.
And I think also it really speaks to this idea that now people complain about being canceled and like getting a little bit of shit online. I mean the things that Robin went through, Like she is literally ostracized for just having been honest about her life.
She is branded with that title.
It follows her for a really long time.
Suffice to say, I assume she regrets having done that. Original Barbara Walters interview.
She does regret it.
I mean, I don't know how anybody couldn't, you know, looking back on what happened as a result. But she did say that to Oprah in two thousand and four, when she released her book. She went on Oprah to promote it and Oprah asked her specifically if she regretted it.
And she said that she did.
She was in no state to really sit and do anything at that time, and that part of it is she was precocious and she felt like she could handle it and I can go talk to the doctor and I'm gonna save him.
But obviously, you know it was more than she could handle.
And Oprah says to her, you were pretty villified at the time, but even in two thousand and four, she's still being villified. And then, in sort of a wild follow up, Mike Tyson does an interview with Oprah in two thousand and nine, just five years after Oprah has had this conversation with Robin Gibbons, and he jokes about hitting Robin during his marriage, and it's really shocking. You have to hear it, and you have to hear the audience's reaction.
Were you surprised that she was saying those things? Yeah, I truly wanted to soccer, you know that particular bok. I truly wanted to soccer.
I mean, after from the audience, I just it's I can't get over it.
Yeah, it's really every time I hear it, it's still is so jarring to me.
And you know what it reminds me of is when the audience laughed at Trump joking about sexual assault only recently. It's so disturbing and it's like so baked in and this is twenty years after the actual event that they're talking about.
Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the brick Kvnah hearing too. Do you remember when Christine Blosi Ford says like she remembers the laughter. It's like that same kind of uncomfortable laughter that people sort of lean into in these moments where they're uncomfortable, but also they're trying to dismiss the seriousness of something.
And maybe like not laughing about domestic violence accusations is just like a good rule, just a rule of thumb and domestic of our sexual violence.
Yeah, And to be clear, Robin is really upset by this interview that Mike Tyson does with Oprah. At this point, she's the spokesperson for the National Domestic Island's hot line Oh Okay, and she writes Oprah a letter saying she was hurt that Oprah didn't say anything or ask the audience to stop laughing when it happened. She says, I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say. There wasn't a part of me that wanted you to say that's not right.
When there's this laughter, if you were in that situation out there, it kind of lightens it for all the women that are experiencing this. Yeah, and that's a good point, right. A lot of people who are watching the Oprah Show might be going through something like this and seeing the audience laugh at Mike Tyson talking about socking her probably doesn't make them feel empowered to find a way out of that.
Situation, so to speak about it.
Yeah, and ultimately Oprah does apologize.
Oh that's interesting. I can't imagine that happens very often.
Yeah, I mean, I assume it's pretty rare. Do you remember when you first encountered her in the zeitgeist?
Yeah, I remember watching Robin Gibbons on the television show Head of the Class.
We've talked a lot about the societal impact, and Salamisia has weighed in on the racial aspects, which has been really helpful. But I also just wanted to hear how this felt for Salamisia on a personal level. And she know she was thirteen years old when this interview aired, and a fan of Robin's from those head of the class years.
Robin Gibven stood out to me partly because of her voice, and like, her voice and my voice aren't that dissimilar. Like I used to be called like a bally girl, a lot so of a black girl who had a particular kind of speech pattern an accent. And she was a glamorous black girl who was also a nerd.
Yeah, and she was kind of like sharp tongued and like sassy in a way that I feel like I really related to.
I don't know if you felt that as well.
Yeah, she had like a wit to her.
And I was a black girl at an independent school in New Jersey who wasn't fashionable or glamorous and was athletic, but it was nerdy too, And so I think she represented someone I could aspire to be because she was so pretty, so smart, so witty, and she was also so like above the fray.
What's your memory of that infamous interview with Barbara waltzs.
It was just so shocking because I didn't one understand what he was talking about, but two I actually did feel like I grew up in a my stepfather was physically violent with my mother, so I was familiar with domestic violence, and so her testimony really resonated with me, and I felt deep compassion for her.
And it was also just kind of like.
Odd and jarring to have them sitting next to each other in this interview, with this disclosure of domestic violence.
It was something that I didn't really know what.
To do with, but it really stood out to me because it was such a public disclosure of a woman who was trapped in a marriage in which she felt like she couldn't really leave, and yet she was doing it on national television.
So when did you realize that the reaction to it was so different from your own, that the general public's reaction was like an outpouring of sympathy for him and a lack of empathy for her.
Well, I think almost immediately there was like a kind of public backlash against Robin Gibbons, because she went from being someone who was so appreciated for her beauty and appreciated for her charm and her wit to someone who's seen suddenly as just being with Mike Tyson for his fame and his fortune. So whatever status she had that attracted him to her was suddenly non existent. She was a woman who's just with him as an accessory as
part of his rise to fame. And then once she disclosed that she was being physically abused in that relationship, she just went not from being a victim of abuse, but she suddenly slid quite easily into the kind of gold digger stereotype.
And do you feel like that shaped sort of how you saw the way black women were treated when they came forward with something that was so personal.
I knew that it was possible that a black woman could be victimized by someone she was in an intimate relationship with, and yet it seemed impossible based on the media responses that seemed like the rhetoric and the kind of need York community responses that like, know, this stuff doesn't really happen.
So that's kind of how I had to coexist with these two truths.
We've had these sort of revisiting of all these women, and that's become almost like a cottage industry. Why do you think she's never gotten that re examination? In that larger way.
You have to actually understand the complexity of black women in terms of class and race and gender and performance to appreciate Robin Gibbons because I think a lot of the recuperation projects that we've seen have been primarily not exclusively because there's been stuff on Janet Jackson, have been on white women.
Yeah, right, and so where does Robin Gibbons fit in to that? Because she's a black woman.
Who was also rendered a gold digger and not seen as black, but was black. She's a rich figure, and sometimes I think people have that level of complexity just get written out of history constantly, a little window breaker.
It was so great to hear from Salamisha on this, and also so interesting what she said about feeling like it was impossible for people to believe that a black woman had actually been a victim of violence, and that reminds me of cases that we're even seeing in the
present day. It almost reminds me of me too in some sense, Like we know that racial bias comes into play when we think about how we believe black women, whether it's sexual assault, domestic violence, even in cases like maternal mortality.
Yeah, we just tend to sort of dismiss the pain of black women. There's sort of this trope of strong black women and they should be able to withstand anything. It doesn't feel like things are all that different today, right, not entirely. When you think about the case with Megan the Stallion, she was shot by someone she was having some kind of relationship with Tory Lanez in twenty twenty, and you know, he was sentenced to ten years in prison this year, but people still taunt her online.
She's got right, there's a huge against her.
His team has maligned her in the press so much, and he still denies it. So it feels like there are a lot of parallels between what.
Happened to Megan and what happened to Robin.
And well also like the accusation of clout chasing versus gold dagger, like they're really similar.
Yeah, it's like the sort of modern day gold digging.
And then also we just see these other examples, right, Like there's the Rihanna case with Chris Brown, and in that case, I feel like, you know, it was impossible to deny that Rihanna had been physically assaulted. The photo photographs and do you remember how awful those photographs were.
Yeah, we're so intense.
But that was so interesting too because it was it almost worked in her favor because you could not deny that this had occurred, right, we couldn't deny evidence. But then when she talks about it, she says that having those pictures release was one of the most humiliating things in her life. You know.
So it's this sort of thing that we expect, like we have to get a pound of flesh before we even begin to believe women. And even then, like Chris Brown's career has not taken the hit you would expect. It's not been completely what it might have been otherwise. But you know, Chloe Bailey just announced she's doing a single with him, and that feels really odd with what we know about Chris Brown. Just like Mike Tyson, he has been involved in a number of other assault incidents with women.
It reminds me a bit too of r. Kelly and how it took, I mean, how long over a decade I think, or was it mostle decades for the women who initially spoke out against.
Him, the black women to be believed.
Yeah, we just really require so much evidence in these cases when the man is sort of a beloved figure. And when you think about, you know, Mike Tyson, what's fascinating is that he's become an even.
Broader sort of cultural phenomenon.
Since this happened, he's become sort of this like beloved pop culture figure. He was in the Hangover movies. He's had this best selling memoir, Yeah Beyond Yeah, and then he did this one man show on Broadway that became sort of this likely deal that Spike Lee directed. It became an HBO special. He's had a cartoon series, which, I mean, wow, now we know not only was he very abusive to Robin Gibbons, he was convicted of raping someone.
So you're talking about Desire Washington, right, Can you give us a little background on that case for those who might not know.
Yeah.
So, in nineteen ninety two, not long after this interview with Barbara Walters, Tyson is convicted of raping an eighteen year old girl named Desire Washington.
She's Miss Black Rhode Island.
She's in Indianapolis for the Miss Black America beauty pageant, and she meets Mike Tyson and agrees to go out with him, and he rapes her in what she describes again as an absolutely harrowing rape where she is sobbing and he is laughing through the experience. And he received a six year prison term. I mean he was released after three years, but he was in prison and that was very broadly publicized. It was also a huge case and Larry King went and interviewed him in prison.
It's so easy to forget now in twenty twenty three that he was convicted and served time for rape.
But also like, imagine giving that guy a cartoon series. He had a cartoon series where he like solved myster's Scooby Doo style for like Reesa in twenty fourteen to twenty twenty, right, okay, And that's also crazy because in two thousand and six, when he was asked about Desert Washington, a person he's been convicted of raping, he said about her, I really wish I had done it.
Now now I really do want to rape her.
What Who did he say that to?
In an interview with Greta Van Sestren, like on Fox? They aired on Fox?
Yeah, do I remember correctly that he actually appeared on an episode of Law and Order SV Yes.
It was actually really controversial.
He did a guest appearance and you know, people who watched that show were mad, like they were like, why are you putting this convicted rapist on television, And it's just because there has been this incredible whitewashing of his history, which again this year, another woman came forward and accused
him of violently raping her in the nineteen nineties. So there's just this ongoing litany of issues around him, and yet somehow he's just kind of escaped from it all and is like considered sweet and funny and is on talk shows all the time.
It's wild and so desire Washington, I mean, I feel like we could devote a whole other episode to her. Was the reaction to her similar to the reaction to Robin Ye.
Very similar. She was very much skewed by the press. She did an interview with Barbara Walters.
Oh, she also did an interview with Barbara Watchers very.
On top of this bet.
Barbara Walters and Barbara Watchers asked her this like really pointed question about what she thought was going to happen when she went up to the hotel room with him, like sort of blaming her.
That is actually such a common question asked victims of assault or sexual assamt Well.
It's like as if just your physical presence is consent, like if you deign to be in a room alone with a man that is like, in and of itself consent, which is just obviously not true. But Desira really gets the same treatment. She's called a gold digger, and she has actually really lived a life that completely abilies that she dropped out of public view after this and has
lived like a very quiet private life. That's always one of these tropes that comes up, right, that these women do it for fame or for money, But for those of us who pay attention to these cases, that's very rarely what these women want or pursue after.
Never get it, yes, you know, as if someone wants that kind of thing, right, as if that fame is anything other than being treated kind of like your radioactive in some way.
Right.
It takes Ronin, for example, ever to really recover her career. She's luckily gone on to have a real career in acting, and she went back ahead of the class and put her head down and just did the work, even though the press around her was crazy. And I think because Eddie Murphy had known her for a long time, he gives her this comeback vehicle. He puts her in the movie Boomerang in the nineties, and she slowly just worked and worked and found her way back. But that's not
the norm. That's the exception in a lot of cases with Hiven like this.
That's so interesting that you say she recovered. So, yes, she recovered, but that's very different than like thriving, right, I mean, what did that mean?
Well?
I think she would say she's thriving just based on you know, interviews that she's given and the way she talks about her life. Now, she became a mom and she has said that that's sort of the thing that saved her, and her two sons are sort of the thing that she's most proud of in her life. But you know, did she have the movie career that Robin Gibbons might have had had this not happened r her?
I think it's impossible to know, but it's very likely, I know, right, But the fact is is that she has been able to make a living and work as an actress and recently she's directed some projects. So it does feel like she was able to salvage her career despite the fact that there was this real concerted effort to destroy her on many levels.
Well, and she put her energy toward important causes as we.
Yeah, she's done a lot of advocacy for women who've been in violent situations. And I actually found this psa she did, which I think is worth listening to.
You deserve a wonderful life, you know, and you deserve really good love, and you deserve to feel safe at home.
If you were someone you know is in an abusive relationship, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at one eight hundred seventy nine nine safe.
It's actually incredible she's able to speak and wants to speak so openly about it.
And I think for her that's a lot of the way in which she recovered. Her memoir really leans into how she found a lot of solace in her religion and how that is also how she was able to kind of forgive a lot of what's happened to her just generally. But you know, reading the book was so interesting because I had done almost all the research by the time I sat down to read her book. I feel like what happens with a lot of these stories is that they become kind of flattened by the media narratives.
Right.
The story is objectively horrible on many levels, but when you're reading the book, it's impossible to sort of escape the human aspects of the story, Like it is so horrible, the descriptions. There's a passage which to me reads so clearly as a rape, although she does not herself define it that way. It is so hard to read sections
of this book. And it's a reminder, you know, at least for me, that even when you're reading a lot about a story, you don't necessarily really take in the emotional aspects of it or the humanity of the people involved. In fact, sometimes the more you read about a story, the less the people involved feel like real people.
Going through real trauma and pain.
And I think that's one of the things that a lot of these stories highlight, which is that once a story sort of takes on a shape of its own in the media, it becomes almost like fictionalized for people, they forget that at the core of the story is a young woman who went through a year of extreme physical violence at the hands of a man she thought was the love of her life.
Yeah, it's easy to forget just what that must have done to her psychologically and what it would have taken to recover on top of what she was already facing.
In the press and by the public.
Right, I mean I just came away from this with so much admiration for her, because I think it would have broken a lot of people, you know, and she's gone on to make this really meaningful life she's really proud of. She says in the book, the life that I have now is greater, more full, more rich, more loving than anything I might have dared to dream. And that's just nice to hear, honestly, given what she went through.
And she did an interview for an E News podcast in twenty nineteen where she's talking to the host about how she looks back on this time in her life.
I think that experience really gave me a sense of compassion for people, you know. It gave me a sense of hoping at least that you can go through difficult times and situations and really try to be better for it.
It's so nice hearing her voice sounding so confident, full of strength.
Yeah, it's really lovely, and I think that feels like a good place to end it. This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening. Is there a cultural moment you can stop thinking about and want us to explore in a future episode. Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com, or find us on Instagram at in Retropod.
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In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media. Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our engineer and sound designer. Sharon Acia is our researcher and associate producer.
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