I have to admit it: I love Will Smith. He is a lot of fun to watch, and he killed it in “Independence Day.” He even made watching a movie with Jeff Goldblum not only watchable but also fun.

That is an accomplishment.

Still, Smith’s outburst at The Oscars™ last year was indefensible. Our society gave up dueling a few years back, and we generally expect that comics will take potshots at the rich and powerful. It is a whole genre of comedy, for God’s sake. And it’s not like Jada Pinkett Smith isn’t ripe for ridicule, or doesn’t deserve it. She humiliates her husband all the time and is in no position to complain.

Still, the whole affair is a tempest in a teapot. The commentary about the incident has always been more interesting than the kerfuffle itself, as it reveals more than a little about the bizarre social mores in the elite strata of society.

That’s why I was struck by an essay in The Root by Candace McDuffie, a leftist magazine with a mostly Black audience. Ms. McDuffie has a pretty significant social footprint, although not one that overlaps with my social circle. In the great Venn Diagram of life, our circles rarely intersect.

Candace’s piece popped out at me because she took what I hope is a contrarian view on the Chris Rock/Will Smith affair: that Chris Rock deserved what he got because he criticized a Black woman, and that should be out of bounds.

Interesting take, although I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Perhaps if Jada had been transgender as well as a polyamorous Black woman who routinely humiliates her husband in public, then Rock’s sentence would have been death. How much violence is acceptable as punishment for a joke is clearly dependent upon where you are on the intersectional victimhood scale (IVS).

A Black woman is high enough on the IVS to rate at least minor violence for having a joke lobbed in her direction.

Smith, you see, is a victim. With a net worth of only $50 million or so, married to a man with a net worth of about $350 million, she should be off limits to criticism because she is also Black. A Black woman. And hence oppressed and in need of defense against mean words said in jest. Through violence.

However, looking at the infamous moment a year later, many have come to understand why Smith hit Rock.

It’s not about condoning violence, but words—especially ones that make Black women the punchline—should have consequences. It wasn’t just him targeting Jada Pinkett-Smith, who suffers from alopecia, that’s got him in trouble with Black men and women through the years.

Antagonizing Black women has always been part of Rock’s approach to comedy and TikTok users have continuously pointed that out. Some even stated Rock had that hit coming. A quick Google search of “article defending Chris Rock” yields over 8 million results while the phrase “article defending Jada against Chris Rock” has just 2 million results.

Though it’s clear a lot of folks still think that the star should be able to joke about whoever he wants, it seems like they’re ok with it because he is known for going after Black women. Here are a few examples of when Chris Rock has publicly insulted us.

She goes on to indict Rock for his jokes about Black women, who apparently are not to be spoken ill of.

So hitting Rock is not about violence; it’s about accountability for insulting the wrong people in jest.

Uh, OK. I guess. Except the accountability was violence. Violence because of a joke.

Pretty much every time somebody gets into a fight and hits somebody it starts with words, but we still put people in jail even when they say “I am only holding the jerk accountable.” For some reason that doesn’t fly with the cops. I wonder why.

That’s not how Candace sees it: “ultimately talk sh*t, get hit is a very real thing—and Rock deserved to find that out the hard way.”

In her interview with Don Lemon on her article Ms. McDuffie makes two very interesting points that really stick out: you shouldn’t make fun of Black women because “words can be violence,” already absurd on its face, and secondly saying mean words can “lead to violence,” which apparently is true–after all, Will Smith got violent–but in the opposite way from which she meant.

Nobody got violent at Smith because she was the butt of a joke. Will Smith got violent because he disliked the joke. That is violence that she actually approves of. Words leading to violence is either good or bad, depending upon who gets hit.

This has nothing to do with an appeal for justice, and everything to do with demanding a special privilege to commit violence if your own particular demographic group is insulted.

If those are the rules, I have news for you: society is going to get very violent indeed, and not all that violence will be directed at the people you want it to be.

By the way: I still love Will Smith and wish him well. If I had to deal with his wife I would be angry all the time too.