(TRIGGER WARNING)
The simple fact: sexual-violence perpetrators and their victims are usually of the same race. So, since I’m talking about Black people in this case, then what I’m saying is those Black people who commit sexual violence usually create victims who are Black, too.
There. I said it.
And statistics back this:
—According to a 2000 report, in 93% of sexual assaults, the rapist and the victim are of the same race. (Source)
—According to 2005 US Department of Justice, out of approximately 36,600 Black sexual-violence victims reporting this crime, 100% reported that their perpetrators was Black. (Source)
I know that I’m not the first—or only—one to make this plain: The Combahee River Collective was founded partly due to Black women fighting sexual violence within some Black communities. Ntozake Shange and Alice Walker—among a few Black female writers who wrote about intraracial rape–caught just about all nine circles of hell for “making Black men look bad” partly because they dared to name that reality in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf and The Color Purple, respectively. Aishah Shahidah Simmons’ No!: The Rape Documentary—through poetry, testimony, and oral history—does an incredible job on examining the realities of Black men raping Black women.
That’s what no one is saying outright about what Too $hort’s said. That’s what hurts about his advice, and that’s what hurts about Very Smart Brothas’ fauxpology. Though Black communities may be going through identity shifts of what “being down for the race” means, there’s still a clinging to the socio-political idea that Black folks are each others’ keepers, each others’ “fam,” each others’ “brothas” and “sistas,” as a buttress in this racist society. So, when there’s an online recommendation from a celebrity seen as an “old enough to know better” and there’s a lack of responsibility for victim-blaming rhetoric under the guise of “rape prevention,” it’s a two-generation, cross-platform exercise of rape culture remixed with Black male privilege that Black women have been traumatized with for several generations.
And we need to say that loud and clear. Again.
(via karnythia)
