National
The Loud Silence of Rape Survivors
By Jazelle Hunt
NNPA Washington Correspondent
FOURTH IN A SERIES
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – An online survey of sexual assault survivors conduced as part of this series vividly captures the fear and reluctance Black women rape survivors exhibit about sharing their ordeal with others:
From a young woman, drugged and raped by a man she met at a party at age 21:
“I told someone, but I never gave specifics because I felt like they would think it was my fault.”
From a middle-aged woman, repeatedly raped by a classmate’s father at age 6:
“When it first happened, we told our teacher and the [school] nurse. We were told that we were making it up. He told me that if I told anyone, he’d kill my whole family. I was scared for weeks after telling my family.”
From a young woman, raped by her then-boyfriend’s older brother at age 15:
“I never told anyone, not even my boyfriend, until I started talking to a therapist on campus during my sophomore year of college…to this day he doesn’t know.”
From a mature woman, raped at ages 12 and 13 and fondled by a pastor at age 15:
“I never said a word. Because in the end, I blamed myself. How do you know to blame yourself at 12 years old?”
Data from the Department of Justice shows that Black women are less likely than other women to report rape and assaults to police or tell anyone what happened.
Why?
About 80 percent of rapes happen between people of the same race. For Black women survivors whose assailants are also Black, cultural codes can make it difficult to speak out.
Black men vs. Black women
“We in Black communities don’t talk about [sexual assault] because of this pressure to protect the race,” says Aishah Shahidah Simmons, a survivor, educator, activist, and director of “NO! The Rape Documentary,” an international award-winning film that explores sexual violence within in the Black community.
The Philadelphia native explained, “[Black women] are valuable when we’re concerned about protecting our men and our children and our communities, but when it comes to talking about the violence that we’ve experienced at the hands of the men in our communities, then we’re traitors.”
Many have absorbed this message, including survivors. For example, Tiffany Perry, a native of Jersey City, N.J., was surprised to hear her mother’s opinion on the Bill Cosby sexual assault allegations.
“My mom is in support of Bill Cosby, she thinks he’s being sabotaged. She’s leaning more on the side of politics…. And I told her, ‘I can’t believe you, a person who has experienced a rape, would be in support of him,’” Perry said.
“You hear all of these women, particularly Black women – ‘Oh, they should’ve said something a long time ago. They just this, and gold-digger that.’ But if these women had said something, who’s to say these women wouldn’t have gotten railroaded then like they are getting railroaded now?”
On top of the expectation to be supportive of Black men, beliefs about what constitutes ideal Black womanhood, including inexhaustible emotional strength and perfect sexual respectability, can add to the trauma for Black women.
After Sharita Lee was raped at age 20 by a childhood friend, she didn’t know what to do. He had attacked her after hours of reminiscing and catching up, and immediately after a sudden phone call that brought news of her grandfather’s death. He was so abrupt that he had interrupted his own condolences when he pinned her to the couch.
“A reason in why I never told was because – in his particular case – as he began to rape me, I felt pleasure. And I knew I was not supposed to be feeling pleasure because I was being raped,” she says nervously. “In the moment, I felt confused, I felt stupid, because – you know? It’s almost like, do I just say ‘forget it’ that he’s raping me, to enjoy it, or not? So for me, I couldn’t even admit it. This is probably the first time I’m admitting it out loud, ever.”
Distrust of mainstream systems
There are other reasons Black women are less likely to vocalize their pain, including a deep distrust law of both the criminal justice system and the medical community.
Much has been written, for example, of J. Marion Simms, “The Father of Gynecology” who developed his technique by experimenting on enslaved women, without anesthesia, arguing that they could bear levels of pain that White women could not.
Perhaps the most notable incident that gave African Americans pause was the famous Tuskegee syphilis study from 1932-1947 in which treatment for 399 Black men was intentionally withheld even after it was discovered that penicillin was effective in treating the disease.
And there are other reasons for widespread distrust.
The Institute of Medicine report, “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare,” concluded that “(al)though myriad sources contribute to these disparities, some evidence suggests that bias, prejudice, and stereotyping on the part of healthcare providers may contribute to differences in care.”
Furthermore, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a national advocacy and education organization, notes that Black people are less likely to be accurately diagnosed and receive thorough treatment than their White counterparts; are less likely to receive culturally aware care; and are more likely to harbor stigmas about mental illness and treatment.
When Black women develop mental and emotional trouble after an assault, their strength is called into question, as if the pain is a sign of weakness.
“[The term ‘strong Black woman’] denies us of our humanity,” Simmons explained. “This is something – I’ve observed – that plays a role in Black women being able to be raped without recourse. Because it’s like, ‘We can take it, we’re strong, we’re not vulnerable or fragile.’”
As for law enforcement, Blacks and Latinos are incarcerated at disproportionately higher rates in part because police target them for minor crimes, according a report titled, “Black Lives Matter: Eliminating Racial Inequity in the Criminal Justice System” by the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based organization that works for a fair and effective U.S. criminal justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing policy, addressing unjust racial disparities and practices, and advocating for alternatives to incarceration.
In addition, a recent ACLU report found, “Once arrested, people of color are also likely to be charged more harshly than whites; once charged, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, they are more likely to face stiff sentences – all after accounting for relevant legal differences such as crime severity and criminal history.”
For Tiffany Perry, it was more personal than a philosophical distrust of the criminal justice system. At 21 years old, she was the victim of an attempted rape by a police officer. The married policeman was also her co-worker, and her usual ride home after work. One evening, he cornered her in a secluded makeshift office and pinned on a couch where officers slept between shifts.
“I’m saying, ‘Stop! Stop, get off of me what are you doing? I’m going to scream!’ And he says, ‘Go ahead, who’s going to save you, you’re in a police station.’ When he said that to me I just froze. I was like, ‘Wow, I am. Nobody’s going to do anything,’” she remembered.
After groping her for a few more minutes, her assailant suddenly changed his mind, releasing her.
“The thing is – when we left there, I got in the car with him. And I tried to explain this…I was so afraid of him that I got in the car with him,” Perry says. “To people, that doesn’t make any sense…but when he said, ‘Nobody’s going to hear you, and nobody’s going to believe you,’ I convinced myself that he was right. I felt like I should’ve known better.”
She never reported the incident. Two years later, she was able to tell her mother, who had been raped and had become pregnant with her at age 15.
“I didn’t want to be scrutinized, I didn’t want to be under the limelight. I didn’t want to relive it. I didn’t want to talk about it,” Perry said. “Even now I have feelings of guilt…what if, because I didn’t say nothing, this guy went further with some other young lady? Or, maybe I wasn’t the first…maybe the person before me, she didn’t seem mad either, so that’s what made him think it was okay to do that to me.
“You say to yourself, you don’t know what’s right or wrong. You just do what you can, or know how to do in that moment.”
NEXT WEEK: Life after Rape
Part I: Rape and the Myth of ‘The Strong Black Woman’
Part III: Some Faith Leaders Victimize Survivors Again
(The project was made possible by a grant from the National Health Journalism Fellowship, a program of the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.)
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Activism
OPINION: “My Girl,” The Temptations, and Nikki Giovanni
Giovanni was probably one of the most famous young African American women in the 1960s, known for her fiery poetry. But even that description is tame. The New York Times obit headline practically buried her historical impact: “Nikki Giovanni, Poet Who Wrote of Black Joy, Dies at 81.” That doesn’t begin to touch the fire of Giovanni’s work through her lifetime.
By Emil Guillermo
The Temptations, the harmonizing, singing dancing man-group of your OG youth, were on “The Today Show,” earlier this week.
There were some new members, no David Ruffin. But Otis Williams, 83, was there still crooning and preening, leading the group’s 60th anniversary performance of “My Girl.”
When I first heard “My Girl,” I got it.
I was 9 and had a crush on Julie Satterfield, with the braided ponytails in my catechism class. Unfortunately, she did not become my girl.
But that song was always a special bridge in my life. In college, I was a member of a practically all-White, all-male club that mirrored the demographics at that university. At the parties, the song of choice was “My Girl.”
Which is odd, because the party was 98% men.
The organization is a little better now, with women, people of color and LGBTQ+, but back in the 70s, the Tempts music was the only thing that integrated that club.
POETRY’S “MY GIRL”
The song’s anniversary took me by surprise. But not as much as the death of Nikki Giovanni.
Giovanni was probably one of the most famous young African American women in the 1960s, known for her fiery poetry. But even that description is tame.
The New York Times obit headline practically buried her historical impact: “Nikki Giovanni, Poet Who Wrote of Black Joy, Dies at 81.”
That doesn’t begin to touch the fire of Giovanni’s work through her lifetime.
I’ll always see her as the Black female voice that broke through the silence of good enough. In 1968, when cities were burning all across America, Giovanni was the militant female voice of a revolution.
Her “The True Import of Present Dialogue: Black vs. Negro,” is the historical record of racial anger as literature from the opening lines.
It reads profane and violent, shockingly so then. These days, it may seem tamer than rap music.
But it’s jarring and pulls no punches. It protests Vietnam, and what Black men were asked to do for their country.
“We kill in Viet Nam,” she wrote. “We kill for UN & NATO & SEATO & US.”
Written in 1968, it was a poem that spoke to the militancy and activism of the times. And she explained herself in a follow up, “My Poem.”
“I am 25 years old, Black female poet,” she wrote referring to her earlier controversial poem. “If they kill me. It won’t stop the revolution.”
Giovanni wrote more poetry and children’s books. She taught at Rutgers, then later Virginia Tech where she followed her fellow professor who would become her spouse, Virginia C. Fowler.
Since Giovanni’s death, I’ve read through her poetry, from what made her famous, to her later poems that revealed her humanity and compassion for all of life.
In “Allowables,” she writes of finding a spider on a book, then killing it.
And she scared me
And I smashed her
I don’t think
I’m allowed
To kill something
Because I am
Frightened
For Giovanni, her soul was in her poetry, and the revolution was her evolution.
About the Author
Emil Guillermo is a journalist, commentator, and solo performer. Join him at www.patreon.com/emilamok
Black History
Book Review: In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World
It’s a tale of heroes: the Maroons, who created communities in unwanted swampland, and welcomed escaped slaves into their midst; Sarah Baartman, the “Hottentot Venus”; Marème Diarra, who walked more than 2000 miles from Sudan to Senegal with her children to escape slavery; enslaved farmers and horticulturists; and everyday people who still talk about slavery and what the institution left behind.
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
Ever since you learned how it happened you couldn’t get it out of your mind.
People, packed like pencils in a box, tightly next to each other, one by one by one, tier after tier. They couldn’t sit up, couldn’t roll over or scratch an itch or keep themselves clean on a ship that took them from one terrible thing to another. And in the new book “In Slavery’s Wake,” essays by various contributors, you’ll see what trailed in waves behind those vessels.
You don’t need to be told about the horrors of slavery. You’ve grown up knowing about it, reading about it, thinking about everything that’s happened because of it in the past four hundred years. And so have others: in 2014, a committee made of “key staff from several world museums” gathered to discuss “telling the story of racial slavery and colonialism as a world system…” so that together, they could implement a “ten-year road map to expand… our practices of truth telling…”
Here, the effects of slavery are compared to the waves left by a moving ship, a wake the story of which some have tried over time to diminish.
It’s a tale filled with irony. Says one contributor, early American Colonists held enslaved people but believed that King George had “unjustly enslaved” the colonists.
It’s the story of a British company that crafted shackles and cuffs and that still sells handcuffs “used worldwide by police and militaries” today.
It’s a tale of heroes: the Maroons, who created communities in unwanted swampland, and welcomed escaped slaves into their midst; Sarah Baartman, the “Hottentot Venus”; Marème Diarra, who walked more than 2000 miles from Sudan to Senegal with her children to escape slavery; enslaved farmers and horticulturists; and everyday people who still talk about slavery and what the institution left behind.
Today, discussions about cooperation and diversity remain essential.
Says one essayist, “… embracing a view of history with a more expansive definition of archives in all their forms must be fostered in all societies.”
Unless you’ve been completely unaware and haven’t been paying attention for the past 150 years, a great deal of what you’ll read inside “In Slavery’s Wake” is information you already knew and images you’ve already seen.
Look again, though, because this comprehensive book isn’t just about America and its history. It’s about slavery, worldwide, yesterday and today.
Casual readers – non-historians especially – will, in fact, be surprised to learn, then, about slavery on other continents, how Africans left their legacies in places far from home, and how the “wake” they left changed the worlds of agriculture, music, and culture. Tales of individual people round out the narrative, in legends that melt into the stories of others and present new heroes, activists, resisters, allies, and tales that are inspirational and thrilling.
This book is sometimes a difficult read and is probably best consumed in small bites that can be considered with great care to appreciate fully. Start “In Slavery’s Wake,” though, and you won’t be able to get it out of your mind.
Edited by Paul Gardullo, Johanna Obenda, and Anthony Bogues, Author: Various Contributors, c.2024, Smithsonian Books, $39.95
Black History
Ashleigh Johnson: Pioneering the Way in Water Polo
Ashleigh Johnson attended Princeton University, where she played for the Tigers and dominated collegiate water polo. During her time at Princeton, she became the program’s all-time leader in saves and was recognized for her extraordinary ability to anticipate plays and block shots. She was a three-time All-American and was pivotal in leading her team to multiple victories. Balancing rigorous academics and athletics, she graduated with a degree in Psychology, showcasing her determination both in and out of the pool.
By Tamara Shiloh
Ashleigh Johnson has become a household name in the world of water polo, not only for her incredible athleticism and skill but also for breaking barriers as the first Black woman to represent the United States in the sport at the Olympic level. Her journey begins as a determined young athlete to a record-breaking goalkeeper.
Born on September 12, 1994, in Miami, Florida, Ashleigh grew up in a family that valued sports and academics. She attended Ransom Everglades School, where she was introduced to water polo. Despite water polo being a niche sport in her community, she quickly stood out for her remarkable agility, intelligence, and reflexes. Her unique skill set made her a natural fit for the demanding role of a goalkeeper.
Ashleigh attended Princeton University, where she played for the Tigers and dominated collegiate water polo. During her time at Princeton, she became the program’s all-time leader in saves and was recognized for her extraordinary ability to anticipate plays and block shots. She was a three-time All-American and was pivotal in leading her team to multiple victories. Balancing rigorous academics and athletics, she graduated with a degree in Psychology, showcasing her determination both in and out of the pool.
In 2016, Ashleigh made history as the first Black woman to be selected for the U.S. Olympic Water Polo Team. Representing her country at the Rio Olympics, she played a crucial role in helping Team USA secure the gold medal. Her stellar performances earned her the distinction of being named the tournament’s top goalkeeper, further cementing her status as one of the best players in the sport’s history.
Ashleigh didn’t just stop at one Olympic appearance. She continued her dominance in water polo, playing a key role in Team USA’s gold medal win at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Her ability to remain composed under pressure and deliver outstanding saves in crucial moments made her an irreplaceable member of the team.
At the age of 29, Johnson appeared in her third Olympiad in Paris at the 2024 Summer Olympics. Their first match was against Greece and the US team won easily and Johnson only gave up 4 points. U.S. Olympic head coach Adam Krikorian shared, “She’s an incredible athlete. She’s got great hand-eye coordination, great reflexes and reactions. And then she’s fiercely competitive – fiercely. And you would never know it by her demeanor or by the huge smile on her face. But to us, on the inside, we know how driven she is to be one of the best ever to do it.”
Team USA Women’s Water Polo ended their Olympic season in fourth place after a 10 – 11 loss to the Netherlands. Johnson only allowed 37 percent of the shots from the Netherlands.
Beyond her achievements in the pool, Ashleigh has used her platform to advocate for diversity in water polo and sports in general. As a trailblazer, she recognizes the importance of representation and works to encourage young athletes, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds, to pursue their dreams.
Ashleigh has spoken about the challenges she faced as a Black woman in a predominantly white sport and how she turned those obstacles into opportunities for growth.
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