From Womanspace May 2008
 "Sue’s Views"**

When Black Woman Are Raped

Why do black women fail to report rape.  Maretta Short, president of NOW New Jersey, recently forwarded two important articles on this issue.  One was by Salamishah Tillet, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the other by Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a professor at Princeton University.  Both appeared on TheRoot.com.  Both writers came to the same conclusion.

Black women account for about l8 to 28 percent of rape victims.  About 90 percent of victims report they were assaulted by a member of their own racial or ethnic group.  Harris-Lacewell writes, “Black women raped by black male perpetrators often remain silent because they are alone.  They don’t want to confirm white racial stereotypes; their own families and communities tell them to shut up; they have little reason to think that authorities will take their cases seriously; they fear the devastating ramifications of a manhunt in black communities if they are believed; and in the history of lynching, white women have been adversaries not allies, on the question of rape.”

Tillet adds “ … rape victims do not want to perpetuate stereotypes about the black male rapist and … they fear criminalizing African-American men.  But even more egregiously, African-American women know that they risk being labeled a race traitor by some who view their actions as airing dirty linen.

This is an attitude I am familiar with.  All minority groups are protective of their communities.  This is why liberal American Muslims have been slow to condemn fatwas by some Muslim clergy ordering the murder of dissidents, or to admit that some of the teachings in the Koran are destructive and are not to be taken literally but to be understood as ideas within the framework of the time in which they were written.

In my own case, as a Jewish woman, I was raised to believe that ‘Jewish men don’t do that,” meaning they don’t rape women or beat their wives.  Imagine my shock when I eventually met a pregnant woman who told me her Jewish husband had been beating her while she was pregnant.  And then my surprise when, many years later, I heard a Yiddish song , probably written in the late l9th or early 20th century, which was a plaint by a woman telling about her abuse at the hands of her husband.  Of course the group performing this song was a woman’s klezmer band.  My mother’s mantra “ Jewish men don’t do that” was a means of not washing dirty linen in public, of protecting the reputation of our minority community .

We all know by now, however, what protecting criminals does to a community.  Protecting drug dealers in public housing, or even ignoring bad behavior such as graffiti or inconsiderate levels of noise destroys the livability of the buildings. Ignoring rape or any other destructive, anti-social behavior just encourages more such behavior.

From a feminist perspective, when a woman who has been assaulted is more concerned with protecting the innocent men in her community than with her own pain, she not only harms herself, but is committing a great injustice to other victims and victims in the future.  This is a pattern of thinking that I feel quite sure is essentially female.  When a man is violated in any way, by assault, robbery or rape – I doubt very much he starts worrying about everyone else before reporting the crime.  A woman in that situation should be encouraged to think about herself first, and if she has the energy, to commiserate with her sisters who have been through the same trauma.

As far as protecting her community, the only way to deal with a sensitive issue is to have the courage to tell the truth, to share that truth with other victims and with the community at large.  Only then can the community begin to think about the problem and take action.
 

**Suzanne Messing is a member of the Northern New Jersey NOW chapter.

Contact Sue at SuzMessing@Aol.com or Northern New Jersey NOW at NNJNOW@nownj.org.