Surviving the Silence: Black Women's Stories of Rape Book

"There is an uncanny silence surrounding the trauma of black rape." - Charlotte Pierce-Baker, author

"We all have free will, but when it comes to black men, all of a sudden everybody blames us -black women- for what goes wrong in our rae. Allof a sudden black men are not responsible for themselves. We have to be responsible for them. Then we're blamed when they go to white women; we're blamed when they kill each other. We're not valued as people to the same degree that other people are valued. Even less so than black men. A professor at the university said in class, in my presence that "you can't get raped unless you go slinking through the ghetto." As if I'm not even a human being. I was sitting there! We're disposable people, black women. I -as a black woman- have feelings. I get angry; I feel delight; I cry myself to sleep. We have the whole range of emotions that anybody else does." - Ruth

"Talking about rape is like taboo, and we all know it's taboo."
"...for black women it's taboo "to tell"; the brothers are hurting so bad we don't want to hurt 'em anymore. God forbid we should put another worry on them!" - Matilda, twenty-year old college student

"White women are usually put up on a pedestal. With the black woman it only takes one smudge, and you carry that smudge with you for the rest of your life. Most white women feel that black women should be used to being raped. When I was going to high school, I went to a racially mixed school. When we got to the Civil War, most of the white girls I went to school with felt that black women enjoyed sleeping with the masters. To me that was something that was passed on to them by their families. I figure that's how the white man justified raping black women back then; it was okay because "they enjoyed it." - Adrienne, forty-year old nurse

"...rape is a men's issue. Rape says much more about men than it ever has about women. Rape is a louder statement about masculinity than it is about femininity." - Rus Ervin Funk, Stopping Rape: A Challenge for Men

"We thought we could take care of anything ourselves! Our relationship had always been very private. Even our parents weren't privy toeven the remotely intimate parts of our life. I think if we had done therapy together, it would have made a difference. But within our marriage -and our family of three- there was ocmplete silence. I was complicitous, totally, in the silence. It would, somehow...just get better." -David, husband of rape survivor.

Speak out - don't remain Silent!
Organizations that can help:
Women Organized Against Rape (WOAR)

Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Netwoek (RAINN)