Former assemblymember: Domestic violence in Black and Brown communities needs real solutions, not just talk

A former state assembly member says major headlines involving the murder of prominent Black women by their partners have unnerved her and she wants to create awareness about the issue. Mathylde Frontus, who represented the 46th State Assembly District, which includes Coney Island and many of the waterfront communities in southern Brooklyn, from 2018 to 2022, recently organized a roundtable bringing together mental health experts and local Coney Island leaders to address the epidemic affecting Black and Brown communities. Frontus said she was disturbed major headlines involving the killings of women, including Dr. Cerina Fairfax, who was slain by her estranged husband; Virginia Lt. Gov. Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax in a murder suicide; and Coral Springs, Florida, Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer Bowen at the hands of her husband.

“I was feeling this knot in my stomach about the response [to these incidents] outside of the textbook gender wars on socials,” said Frontus who is now a board member of the Coney Island Neighborhood Revitalization Corporation (CINRC), a not-for-profit organization formed in January 2023.

Despite the growing awareness of domestic and intimate partner violence, it still disproportionately affects women of color. About 45% of Black women experienced stalking and/or physical and sexual violence in their lifetimes, and an estimated 51% of Black female adult homicides were related to intimate partner violence, according to a national study from 2024.

Frontus noticed that in public forums, especially online, people are too concerned with arguing about the language of domestic violence and giving it labels like toxic masculinity, rather than combating the problem with real resources and conversation.

Frontus launched the virtual roundtable to invite women from Coney Island to discuss their personal experiences with domestic violence safely and how mental health professionals can help.

“Domestic violence in Black and Brown communities is both a public health crisis and a systems failure,” said Dr. Lena Green, Hope Center executive director, a panelist at the event. “Combating DV goes beyond individual incidents; it’s about intergenerational cycles shaped by poverty, racism, housing instability, and chronic under-resourcing of community-based mental health care. The takeaway for me is that awareness alone isn’t enough. We need sustained, culturally responsive interventions and ongoing investments in community-based organizations specializing in this work.”

One of the main topics discussed at the roundtable was the connection of mental health, trauma, and the cultural tendency in Black communities to keep problems within the family, making it harder to address issues like domestic violence.

“The instinct to protect family privacy is rooted in real historical experiences: over-policing, criminalization, a justified distrust of systems that have repeatedly failed Black and Brown communities. However, that same instinct, when applied to domestic violence, can become a wall that traps survivors in silence, trauma, and danger,” said Green.

Dr. Onaje Muid, founder of Whm MSW Healing Well, Inc., added that “it is incorrect to label the lingering consequences of enslavement as a cultural norm. Yet, it points to the need to re-define what is our reclaimed wellness culture that can and must overcome historical trauma and harmful power dynamics within Black and Brown communities.”