Black Women and Fight Against Sexual Violence Article Reflection you can write a short essay (1 to 2 pages, double-spaced) responding to any of the assigne

Black Women and Fight Against Sexual Violence Article Reflection you can write a short essay (1 to 2 pages, double-spaced) responding to any of the assigned readings. This response is an opportunity for you to take slow and deep reading, and to reflect on the points raised by the author(s). You can pose questions and/or raise thoughts. Please DO NOT simply make a summary. ?
Black Women and the Fight against Sexual
Violence
#MeToo
Cheryl Rodriguez
May 10, 2018
We cannot fully comprehend today’s activism without the complex histories of
Black women’s struggles against sexual violence.
Ida B. Wells. Artwork by Allison Adams, 2017
Several years ago I interviewed a retired scholar who was one of the rst Black women to earn a
PhD in anthropology. As a young student matriculating in a predominantly white institution in the
mid-1950s, her experiences were harrowing. Upon completion of her master’s degree in
anthropology, one of her white male professors called her to his o ce and told her that she had too
many strikes against her to earn a PhD. Those strikes included being a Negro, being a woman, and
being attractive. This stunning assertion of white male superiority was not a new occurrence for this
young Black woman. She understood that the professor was attempting to humiliate and degrade
her for achieving beyond the raced and gendered expectations for Black students at that time. In his
misogynistic mind, this resolute Black woman was not t to enter academia—a domain of white,
male, heteropatriarchal power—where she was not welcome and where she would be culpable for
the sexual assaults that would be visited upon her.
Although weary of the many insults she had endured during her undergraduate and graduate years,
the young student had the courage to apply to a university with a prominent anthropology
department to earn her terminal degree. This highly accomplished woman did not speak about this
incident during her early matriculation; any attempt to report the experience to university o cials
would have been futile. In the 1950s, on the cusp of the civil rights era, racial and gender justice
were illusive ideals. Her resistance to racist and sexist brutality came in the form of personal
determination to complete the PhD and become a role model for Black students in academia and
anthropology.
We are also silenced in profound ways by not knowing the histories of Black women who have
fought sexual violence.
As a Black feminist anthropologist, I have spent my career exploring the fascinating ways that Black
women de ne and rede ne the human experience, despite the barriers posed by the intersection of
racism, sexism, and classism. This particular story speaks to the many ways in which women of
African descent have stood up to discrimination and—through persistence—de ned their own
journeys. Nevertheless, the dehumanization of Black women is part of America’s national race story.
It is a story with a lineage extending back to the era of slavery when Black women bore the burdens
of being either the mammy, whom the white mistress chose to view as asexual, or the lewd and
lascivious jezebel who was held responsible for sexual attacks by the white master. These sexualized
identities as well as the image of the Black male rapist, justi ed lynching and the violent oppression
of Black women and men. To this day, deeply engrained racist images, the brutal history of false
accusations of Black men, and the marginalization of Black women as rape victims, all contribute to
the complex positionality of Black women in struggles against sexual violence. However, social and
political actions against the pervasive grip of racism should not overshadow Black women’s
struggles for the right to safety in the workplace, in community life, and at home.
As grassroots activists and scholars, Black feminists have raised their voices and mobilized against
sexism and misogyny in the name of Black women’s survival. My examination of sexual violence
involves not only deconstructing masculinity and patriarchy but also taking a hard look at cultural
and social practices that have rendered Black women silent and invisible as targets of misogyny. It is
important to talk about silence and silencing because these are powerful forces in the perpetuation
of violence against women and a major theme in Black women’s writings about sexual harassment,
rape, battering, and other forms of abuse. In her book, Surviving the Silence: Black Women’s Stories
of Rape (1998), Charlotte Pierce-Baker argues that silences must be disrupted in order to heal and
thrive, but also to bring Black women’s voices to the struggle against sexual violence. Anthropologist
Johnnetta Cole and her co-author Beverly Guy-Sheftall (2003) also discuss the notion of breaking
silences in order to expand analyses of sexual politics within Black communities.
All over the world women are subordinated when they are taught to blame themselves for misogyny
and brutality. On International Women’s Day, I was reminded of the cultural and social practices that
contribute to women’s voicelessness in the protection of our bodies. At a local community panel, I
listened to Iranian women’s accounts of being sexually assaulted in holy places or being victimized
by men while walking in public despite the protection of the hijab. They discussed the bitter irony of
women being taught that if they cover themselves properly no harm will come to them. While
listening to these women I recalled motherly talks about the protection of clothing and dress during
my girlhood years in the Jim Crow South. My grandmother, my mother, and my aunts often spoke to
the girls of our family about our bodies and our responsibility to behave responsibly in those
bodies. We were taught that if we dressed appropriately, sat properly, and carried ourselves with
dignity, men would respect us. Even as I came to realize the fallacy of those maternal theories, I also
understood that the women in my family were passing on to us what they had been taught as young
women. Instructing us to carry ourselves with grace was a survival strategy but we were not given
the tools to speak out when necessary.
From slavery to the present, Black women have stood up to sexual violence while also ghting
for race and gender equality.
We are also silenced in profound ways by not knowing the histories of Black women who have
fought sexual violence. From slavery to the present, Black women have stood up to sexual violence
while also ghting for race and gender equality. In the 1890s, journalist and race woman Ida B. Wells
—one of the shining “sheroes” in Black women’s history—waged a courageous campaign against
lynching, which primarily targeted Black men who were often falsely accused of raping white
women. Wells also spoke out publicly against the sexual exploitation of Black women by white men.
Wells and members of the Black women’s club movement stood in defense of Black womanhood
within and outside of the Black community, understanding that Black women embodied and lived
with multiple intersecting forms of oppression. While we revere Rosa Parks’s valiant work against
racism, her activism in the name of Black womanhood is rarely discussed. Parks’s early work with
the NAACP involved investigations of sexual assaults against Black women. In 1944, she traveled to
Abbeville, Alabama, to investigate the case of Recy Hill, who had been gang raped by seven white
men. In 1949, Parks investigated the rape of Gertrude Perkins, who was abducted and raped by two
police o cers in Montgomery, Alabama. Through these investigations, Parks spoke out against the
blatant disregard for Black women and widened the lens on oppression to encompass race and
gender.
Standing on the foundations built by Wells, Parks, and many other Black women, Anita Hill’s
undaunted testimony in 1991 during the Clarence Thomas con rmation hearing, brought public
attention to the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. Hill’s accusations of Thomas’s sexual
overtures when they both worked as attorneys for the Department of Education and later, the Equal
Opportunity Employment Commission, engendered con icting views on race loyalty among many
African Americans. It is also important to remember that in the days following her controversial
testimony, a group of Black women wrote and published a manifesto supporting Anita Hill. Sixteen
hundred women signed “African American Women in Defense of Ourselves” to denounce Hill’s
treatment at the hearing, assert that sexual abuse of Black women had never been recognized, and
contend that Black women who dared to speak out were never believed.
Tarana Burke’s grassroots activism against sexual violence is also a part of this Black women’s
history that must be known. In 2007, Burke founded Just Be, an organization that supports victims of
sexual abuse. She started the #MeToo movement long before that phrase became a hashtag and a
term associated with white women celebrities. In 1997, Burke heard a young Black woman’s story of
abuse and was unable to look at that woman and say, “me too.” That phrase, and her silence, stayed
with Burke and inspired her to create a movement to address sexual violence.
Black women and other women of color have expressed frustration with what seems to be white
women’s appropriation of the phrase, “me too.” However, all women are vulnerable in societies that
are grounded in misogyny. #MeToo and #TimesUp have attacked the silences surrounding sexual
brutality by engaging in painful and courageous truth telling. The expansion of these movements
requires coalition building and a willingness to learn about the many histories that have come
together to ght patriarchal brutality—and the unique challenges Black and other women of color
have faced in these struggles.
Meanwhile, Burke is standing on a solid legacy of activism. She understands that sexual harassment
and all forms of violence against women are systemic hallmarks of patriarchal domination that are
meant to degrade and control. Like many Black women before her, she is focused on youth—the
most vulnerable members of her community. Through her organization, Girls for Gender Equity,
Burke is changing the culture of sexual violence in schools, creating future leaders, eradicating the
silences, dismantling patriarchy, and calling gendered violence by its name.
Cheryl Rodriguez is the director of the Institute on Black Life and a faculty member in the
Department of Africana Studies at the University of South Florida. Her research explores community
histories, women’s anti-poverty activism, and feminisms in Africa and the diaspora.
Allison Adams is a painter based in Southern California. She earned her BFA from the California
Institute of the Arts. Best known for her stylized oil paintings of women, she began the
Groundbreaking Girls project (groundbreakinggirls.com) as a way to celebrate in uential women of
history and tell their stories.
Rodriguez, Cheryl. 2018. “Black Women and the Fight against Sexual Violence.” Anthropology News
website, May 10, 2018. DOI: 10.1111/AN.856
Related Categories
Related Tags
?
?
161
Commenting Disclaimer ?
© 2018 American Anthropological Association • 2300 Clarendon Blvd, Suite 1301 • Arlington, VA • 22201 • TEL (703) 528-1902 • FAX
(703) 528-3546

Purchase answer to see full
attachment