People don't ever seem to realize that doing what's right is no guarantee against misfortune.

The area’s historical and contemporary racism might have made the local NAACP feel compelled to take the stance it did, says Lester Spence, an Africana studies and political science professor at Johns Hopkins. This is not the first time the NAACP has advocated for black men accused of sex crimes. The organization came under fire in 2008 for rallying around a group of black teens who gang raped a black woman and forced her to have sex with her 12-year-old son at the Dunbar Village Apartment Complex in South Florida. The NAACP held a rally supporting the accused that included fliers labeling the men “victims.” They were later convicted, and the main assailant received eight life sentences. The state NAACP issued an apology, but the national NAACP stood by its original stance.

There’s a difference between Silsbee and Dunbar Village, however, points out lawyer-turned-blogger Gina McCauley, who led the black feminist critique of the NAACP’s Dunbar Village stance:

[Hillarie], a young White woman, has infrastructure in place to advocate on her behalf, but the majority of the time when the NAACP is running around coddling and defending violent predators, the victims are Black women and girls who don’t have such support.

So on football Sunday I’m in a crappy mood. Its nothing personal just that ladies time and I’m trying to control my own anger as far as my emotions during that time. So I decide to get on the internet and do some researching and blogging just to get some things off my mind I guess.


I come across an article of this high school girl who was raped by a football player. While she was being raped, there were 2 witnesses outside who heard the girl say no and heard what was going on outside of that locked door. So to get the point of things when the case goes to trial the football player and the other young man involved in the rape plead to a lesser charge. They ignored what the witnesses had heard and never took that into account when it came to the victims testimony. She was put into a position to where either she had to cheer for the boy who raped her or get kicked off the cheerleading squad. The whole town had been harassing her and still does to this day.


Now what is with the victim blaming? When is it ever ok to rape a woman? Is it ok to rape a woman because she’s drunk? Is it ok to rape a woman because she’s showing skin? Is it ok to rape a woman because she flirted with you? Is it ok to rape a woman because she agreed to fool around with you but when it comes down to actually having sexual intercourse with you she said no? is it ok to gang rape a 11 year old girl because she “dresses” like she’s 20? Is it ok to rape a mother and then force her to have sex with her 12 year old son? All I want to know is when is it ok?


The funny thing about this is the NAACP. Every single time a black man is accused of rape they come out like flies on a pile of shit. So eager to defend his rights, claiming that they should have the same rights as white men. Now I’m not saying that black men should not have the same rights my problem is you are defending a man who gang raped a mother and forced her to have sex with her son and your issue is not that he did it, that he couldn’t get out on bail……am I the only one who sees a problem with this? I don’t see them flocking out to protect the rights of rape victims no but they will stand up for the black man.


Again with the victim blaming, this has gotten to the point where men accused of rape are now the victims and women turn into being the ones who turned them on/lead them on/knew what they were doing.
Rape(Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence) is the only crime where there is an “Alleged Victim.” You hear it constantly all the time on the news, all you have to do is turn the channel. It is the only crime where the victims behavior is being determined on weather or not the crime actually took place. I’ve said this a million times before, if you get robbed the police don’t come up to you and blame you for having money in your pockets at the time you were robbed. They don’t ask you why you were wearing your diamond necklace or why you had on $300 shoes. Yes they might comment on it but that’s as far as it goes and they move on with the case. No one blames them for having MATERIALISTIC VALUEABLES taken away from them. When a woman is raped, What was she wearing? Was she drinking? Why was she out alone? What was she doing in that neighborhood? Why didn’t she scream for help? Why didn’t she fight back? Did she lead him on? Why did she let him into her house?
People put more empathy when materialistic items are stolen then when a woman’s body is stolen from her. Why does money have a higher value then a woman’s body? Why do materialistic items have more value over a woman’s body? Doesn’t that pissed anyone else off other than me?


We need to stop protecting the perpetrators and helping the victims. Blaming the victims for what was DONE TO THEM doesn’t solve the problem, it only enables them to keep doing it over and over again. Seriously what does protecting them do? Do you knot want other people to know what’s going on behind close doors? Because rape happens its nothing to be ashamed of, the shame comes from those people who like to sweep it under the rug to try and cover it up, to keep a good name clean.

“I think the black family itself is just so different from the white family. When a black woman is rape, it kind of weakens her as the female part in that family”***

“I think you learn it from watching your mother. Not being taught, just watching. I know my mom, when she would so something and injure herself, she’d say, “Damn.” Then she’d wrap something around it and go back to what she was doing. She’d say, ”Blood coming through there, but got to keep going.”***

“Black women are quick to get up. They may not be ready to stand on two feet, but they do it. You know? They say, “Okay. I need to put this back together. Let me get up.” Say she had this beautiful porcelain vase and say that represents her life and it gets cracked by something like… like a rape. Boom--it splatters everywhere. A black woman would do something like--she would take something like rope and put those pieces back together. It may not be as pretty as the white woman’s vase--taking all that time to put crazy glue on every spot and put it all together real nice and pretty. It may not be pretty but it works just the same. That’s the way we go about putting our lives together. May end up having some kind of little drawback or maybe we have to deal with things like anger and controlling our temper, but we do it. It may not be beautiful, but it gets fixed fast. And it works.”***

Now what my question is does it work? Does it really work to quick fix a problem that big and expect it to work the rest of your life? What is so wrong with taking our time and trying to put the pieces back together again? So what if it takes a long time to individually put each tiny piece back? Wouldn’t that route work out better for us in the long run?

A lot of us take that route of temporarily trying to fix a problem and in the end it always comes back up and bites us in the ass.That vase eventually gets shattered again, even if its by something minor and minuscule.
Those thousands of pieces that were tied together by that rope shatter again.

How many times are we going to wrap a cloth around a broken bone and expect it to heal? Ignoring the pain only allows more time to pass while the anger manifests in your soul. Then you start taking it out on other people. Trying to do your daily, “normal duties” with that mask on your face pretending that nothing is wrong.

Just because we get raped, it does not make us weaker as women, as black women. Because we end up in violent relationships, it does not make us weaker as black women. What another person does to your body is their blame to carry around, not yours. IF you choose to seek help, you are NOT weak. IF you choose not to seek help, you are NOT weak.

Often times we rely on family for advise and how we should handle certain situations. Family IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT. Just because they are related to you does not make their advice remotely right or even in your best interest. I have experienced this in a negative way. My family chooses to ignore my molestation, my rape, my feelings. They chose to try to keep it in the family, that infamous don’t air dirty laundry tactic that black families are famous for. Hell my father told me not to tell anyone about what happened. When I was raped and he had to come home from work the only thing he kept saying was what am I going to tell my job. Like he was ashamed because I was raped.

Now I find that very hilarious.

I know that families “try to keep your best interest at heart” it does not mean they are going about it the right way. It was always drilled into your head that family should be number one in your life and no one should come before them. THAT’S BULLSHIT to me.

My family only made my healing a more difficult process. Once I finally saw the truth and how they really were that’s when I started to change myself and didn’t care if they liked who I was becoming.
  My families ignorance is their own burden to carry not mine, I cant change anyone else but me. I choose not to be close to them because of that ignorance that was hurting me, that’s my own choice.

I’m not obligated to be involved with them just because we are blood and I think that’s wrong with black families now. When someone is hurting you stay away from them. SOME black families have this no matter how much family is hurting you or what they do to you still be involved with them. No, I don’t believe in that idea. If the victim doesn’t want to be around the person who has hurt them then they shouldn’t be criticized for protecting themselves.

We just need to open our minds and hearts and actually look and understand reality. Accept that black women get raped and its not their fault. Accept that black children get molested by family members and friends and its not their fault. Accept that some black men do rape black women and black men and its NOT the victims fault.

Stop being so ignorant and blaming the victims because you want to protect your family.

A Little Girls White Dress

My white dress has been
Covered in blood.
My beautiful white dress has been
Beaten so much
The back is ripped and its
Seam is torn.
My sparkly white dress is
Smudged whit unearthly prints
And stains that can not be
Removed.
My innocent white dress was ripped
Apart into pieces and
Carelessly put back together again.

I’ve tried to burn it, drown it
Pour alcohol on it to set on fire
And it still finds its way to the
Front of my closet
Dirty, fire stains, muddy, smeared with
Blood reeking
Of Jack Daniels, holding on by
A thread.

Sitting in front of what use to be
My white dress, I scream, I bellow
And finally I cry.

Realizing the blood, the torn seam
Smudges and pieces were only visible
To me.

The damage I had done to my own
White dress can be fix,
Even if I can get the blood out.
©Golden Rays

***Excerpt from Jacqueline a survivors of rape, the above quoted text was taken from the book “surviving the Silence Black Women’s Stories of Rape” by Charlotte Pierce-Baker

She's got eyes of innocence, the face of an angel, a personality of a dreamer, and a smile that hides more pain than you can imagine.

        So the past couple of days I’ve been sleeping ok. I haven’t really had any restless nights but I have had nightmares. It was nothing serious though, just petty irrelevant nightmares that really didn’t bother me they were just stupid. Last night I was just kind of irritated, we had the window open to get some fresh air but that didn’t really help me because I was still having hot flashes and I was restless and couldn’t get comfortable so I didn’t fall asleep until about 5:30am.

        When I woke up this morning I felt like total crap. I fed the little one, went to the bathroom then came back and say down on the bed to see if I could relax but I couldn’t. So I jumped in the shower. Like I had felt so dirty, like my vagina was dirty because of the rapes, my vagina started to hurt like the feeling I had after I had been raped so I got in the shower. I did feel a little better but not really. So I put on lotion thinking maybe that would make my body feel better but it didn’t. My skin felt sticky and I had still felt dirty, like there was nothing I could do to get that sticky dirty irritating feeling from off my skin. I had felt so disgusting with my body but I knew what was going on.

        I’m trying to pay more attention to my body and how it reacts to certain situations that way I can pinpoint what’s going on with me and how I can make myself more comfortable and relaxed. I can start to feel when I’m about to have a panic attack or a flashback and usually it helps me to really calm down and handle them without hyperventilating which is good. It is very annoying and embarrassing when my body feels like that sometimes. It feels like my body is betraying me but I know its not. I know that its apart of the healing process which sucks ass but im dealing with it. I’m trying to try out different ways of coping with what’s going on. When my body feels sticky and dirty I usually jump in the shower put lotion on and then baby powder. I know it sounds crazy but the powder does relax me and it does take that sticky feeling away.


      For me personally sometimes I do feel like I’ve been damaged, like there have been parts of me that were taken away that I cant get back and that hurts. Someone took a part of me that no one was suppose to see until I was ready to show them. It feels like I’m not “pure” anymore is the best way to put it. I use to have a really big problem with feeling like “damaged” goods and I’m still working on it.

The rain falls because the sky can no longer handle its weight. Just like 'tears' they fall because the heart can no longer handle the pain.

***“Only weak black women would have allowed themselves to be taken advantage of or, conversely, seeking therapy or other advocacy is what weak (or perhaps white) women do.”

I don’t really know how to actually begin but I started this blog over 3 years ago and I just happened to come across it again while I doing a search for black women surviving rape and this was the only thing I found. So I decided to pick back up writing because it does seam to heal my soul.

I was molested when I was 6 for 2 years, at 16 I was in an abusive relationship with my first serious boyfriend, Over a period of 2 years I was raped and beaten, he was 23 and I finally left him when I was 18. At 19 I was raped by a friend, i was assaulted again when I was 21, I was drugged and raped and only remember bits and pieces of it.

I am a 25 year old Survivor

And I’m still struggling with it all. I use to wish that none of that happened to me, I use to cry all the time about why does it keep happening, I actually thought that I was only placed on this earth to be used and abused and that was just something that I had got use to. I was use to being hit and raped and beaten and being called stupid and all the names. I was so use to it that it was the only thing I would expect my partners to treat me as. No one should expect that kind of treatment.

After putting everything on the table and looking over what I had been through I realized that I held everything in. I never cried during any of the attacks, I didn’t cry after the attacks. I put on my face and just held it inside. And it started to slowly kill me. It just hurt me so bad some days I couldn’t breathe. There have been days where I prayed to God that I would die, that I wouldn’t ever wake up because the pain that I held in hurt too much for me to keep living. I have thought about suicide, I have thought about jumping out the window, about crashing my car and hoping no one would find me. I had drank so much trying to die from alcohol poisoning.

Ummmm……it still hurts me, I’m trying now not to keep those feelings inside of me. And its not like I’m holding it in on purpose I just feel like I cant let them go the way I did when a friend raped me. I cried years after he raped me and it felt good. For me crying is my way of letting things go.

I feel like when I cry people think I’m weak. Like for them crying is a sign of weakness and it shouldn’t be done in public, like its something that should be hidden. My ex-husband has even told me why are you crying? Its not going to change anything so why are you doing it? My father told me the same thing. And I think women should be allowed to cry with out people questioning her. Black women should be allowed to show how hurt they are with out having a time limit put on them, with out being looked at as weak. Because that’s how I use to feel, like if I got everything out of my system and let it go and let my body relax and cry and then deal with it I’m a weak woman because I had a break down.

I’m just now starting to realize that breaking down isn’t musically a bad thing. As long as you put yourself back together again then its ok. As long as your not completely drowning in your misery and pain with out a life preserver then its ok. Everyone breaks down in their life, its just apart of being human.

I’m a SURVIVIOR who is still fighting. I’ve survived, I’m allowed to express my emotions the way I feel as long as I’m not hurting myself or anyone else. I should not feel embarrassed or ashamed for the way that I feel. And just because I ask for help, I am NOT weak. And because I cry, I am NOT weak.

Eventually I will go into details about my personal experiences with rape and domestic violence but this is just a stepping stone for me.

Until next time

***Excerpt from “If You Called to Say Yr sorry Call Somebody Else I Don’t Use “Em No More When Prototypes Become Stereotypes That Keep Black Women Silent About Rape by Jly R. Shaffer”***

Silence Kills

I created this blog for black women who have been raped, sexually assaulted, mentally, physically and emotionally abused and dealt with domestic violence. I am a survivor of molestation, domestic violence and rape. Through out my journey I have gotten help and I’m still getting help but it just feels like I am the only one out here. There are so many different sites and blogs out there for rape survivors it’s wonderful. A couple of them I have joined and found them very useful but I also felt like I was missing something. Then one day I went through the members list to see if I could personally connect with someone I could actually talk to and feel comfortable with and I noticed something. I was the only black member on each of those sites. It felt awkward and embarrassing at the same time. I wasn’t embarrassed because of what had happened to me, I was embarrassed because I was the only woman of color there. I felt like I had a target on my head. I have nothing against those sites, they provided wonderful information and resources that I didn’t know existed, but I wanted a place where I felt like I could be comfortable a place like home.







It seems like we as Strong Black Women always find a way of hiding, a way of covering up our hurt, our pain, and our tears. We push things to the back of our closet, lock the door and throw away the key. Later when it sneaks up on us it’s usually too late for us to deal with. We’ve become bitter and angry, and so hurt that we hurt other people that we love just to try to get the pain to stop. And it never works out that way. We need to stop hiding, stop lying to ourselves, and be there for others like us. There’s no reason why I should have to search the internet for black women surviving rape and come across my old blog and a book. That’s ridiculous. There’s too many of us walking around with our heads underground, faking that smile just going through the motions in life.


I know it hurts, I know it feels like you’re going to die and some days you wish you did. Like nothing in the world will ever make it go away like there is no end. There is, we just have to stick together and help each other out.

I’m writing this blog so other black women don’t feel like they are the only ones out there. YOURE NOT ALONE. You don’t have to comment if you don’t want to, you don’t even have to be my friend on here, as long as there are people out there reading it I know I’m doing my job. A lot of the posts on here are from my personal experiences and how I’m feeling and how I’ve dealt with and or tried to deal with my past. I’m a work in progress but I feel like this is what I’m supposed to be doing with my life at this moment.

Speak up, silence kills slowly

Black Women Reporting Rape

Not only are we [Black women] dealing with racism and sexism from white mainstream society but we’re also dealing with sexism from our community and who we going to tell? Because nobody going to believe us and do we want to see our brother/father/boyfriend/lover/comrade get arrested?

This is the first post that i have done where i actually write my opinion on the subject. being a rape survivor, I've been in the above situation. The man who raped me was black and i knew him. the only thing about my situation was that i did report the man who raped me. and he was not arrested or serve time in jail or was punished. At first i didn't want to say anything because i thought no one would believe me. on that part i was right.

after i reported it no one did believe me. which only made me feel alone and i didn't trust after that. i still don't to this day, trust the police. i know it sounds bad but its the truth.

how do you advocate for someone to come forward with their problems so you can help them when you don't believe a word they are saying?? i mean really its a catch 22.

i honestly felt like i went through the whole process for nothing. calling the detective everyday about my case only having him ask me why am i calling him so much. not to mention during the time he interviewed me asked why i didn't give my rapist oral sex and did i think it was selfish of me not to do it.

last time i checked what happened to me was a crime......on top of that asking him what was taking me so long to write out my statement. I'm thinking to myself are you serious. after being raped i had to call your crappy ass police department.(Prince Georges County Police, Maryland) wait 4 hours for you to show up at the station because you wouldn't drive down here(Charles County, Maryland). then still have to wait for your ass to show up...........

gee i wonder why we don't open our mouth and say anything..........??????????????

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.

The Crappy ass so called fuckin sentacing for the rape and tourture of a woman over a week....

Just a quick summary of the sentences:

Alisha Burton, age 23, 10 years,kidnapping and assault.

Karen Burton, age 46, 30 years, malicious assault and violation of civil rights.

Linnie Burton Jr, age 21, plead guilty to battery on June 9th for striking Williams in the head with his fist. He was given a 6 month suspended sentence and 1 year of supervised probation.

Bobby Ray Brewster, age 25, 12-35 years, second-degree sexual assault, malicious assault and conspiracy to commit kidnapping or holding hostage.

Frankie Brewster, age 49, 10-25 years, second-degree sexual assault.

Danny J. Combs, age 21, 4-20 years, conspiracy to commit kidnapping or holding hostage, assault during the commission of a felony, and first-degree sexual abuse.


George Messer, age 25, 10 years, kidnapping and assault.

Al Sharpton and the NAACP with the Dunbar Village Rape

WEST PALM BEACH - Speaking outside the State Attorney's Office on Tuesday, the Rev. Al Sharpton decried what he said was unequal treatment of the young defendants charged in the Dunbar Village attack and the teens recently arrested on charges of a rape west of Boca Raton.


Backed by relatives of the defendants accused in last year's rape of a Dunbar Village resident, Sharpton said any act of violence against a woman is inexcusable, but he is seeking fairness, considering that the teens charged in a New Year's Day assault west of Boca Raton are free on bail.


"You cannot have one set of rules for acts that are wrong and horrific in Boca and another set in Dunbar Village," said Sharpton, a civil rights activist and president of the New York-based National Action Network. "You must have equal protection under the law."


Avion Lawson, 14; Nathan Walker, 17; Tommy Poindexter, 18; and Jakaris Taylor, 16, all were charged as adults with multiple felonies connected to the attack, in which police say the victim was repeatedly assaulted. Taylor has reached an agreement that would send him to prison for 20 years after pleading guilty to two counts of sexual battery and one count of burglary.



All four teens remain in the Palm Beach County Jail with bail denied, while five teens charged as adults with sexual battery on a physically incapacitated person and lewd and lascivious battery in the New Year's Day case all have posted bond as they await trial. Sharpton said the teens in that case had not been charged as adults; all but a 13-year-old were.



William Long, 18; Alex Perriello, 16; Eduardo Otaegui, 17; Ryan Lafferty, 14; and Blake Carter, 14, are accused of assaulting two middle school students along a canal bank after a night of drinking west of Boca Raton.


In that case, the consumption of alcohol by the teens, including the alleged victims, appears to have been a factor in the assault, according to court documents. The girls ended up in a hospital and one of them is reported to have told one of the boys she wanted to have sex with him, according to court documents. Three of the teen boys admitted to investigators they engaged in sex acts with the girls, one of whom was found by a deputy unconscious and half-naked.



In the Dunbar Village case, the victim was beaten, forced into a sex act with her son at gunpoint and ordered into a tub filled with vinegar and water, where household cleaners were poured on her, police said.


Maude Ford Lee, president of the West Palm Beach chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said she hoped Sharpton's presence would help expose the "injustice."


"We're quite concerned it seems there is a different kind of action that takes place with black kids and white kids," Lee said. "We are not condoning the crimes that these kids supposedly committed but we want equal treatment under the law for them."



Michael Edmondson, spokesman for the State Attorney's Office, said the allegations levied at Tuesday's news conference do not deserve a response.


Cathy Lawson, Avion Lawson's mother, said she is still hurting about the fact her son is charged as an adult."I'm not saying they shouldn't be charged, but I don't feel that they should be charged as adults," she said. "Because they don't have the mind of an adult."



Avion Lawson is "not doing good" in jail and is allowed out of his cell one hour every other day, she said."How would you be doing if you were a 14-year-old locked up in a room?" she asked.Walker's mother, Ruby Walker, also attended the news conference and complained about the treatment her son and his co-defendants have received."We don't like what's going on. It's not right," she said. "I don't think we should have to suffer."



Sharpton also said he plans to follow through on a promise to spend the night at Dunbar Village. He repeatedly expressed his concern about the lack of bail for the Dunbar defendants."In this situation, it is the imbalance that we are protesting. We are not condoning the acts on either side," Sharpton said.


"While we admonish young men in every community to not engage in crime and to respect women, we also admonish the system that you can't have one level of justice for whites and those with money and another level for blacks that live in Dunbar Village."Nancy Othón can be reached at nothon@sun-sentinel.com or 561-228-5502.

The Strong Black Woman Is Dead

She died from having the multiple births of children she never really wanted but was forced to have by the strangling morality of those around her. She died from being a mother at 15 and a grandmother at 30 and an ancestor at 45. She died from being dragged down and sat upon by un-evolved women posing as sisters.

She died from pretending the life she was living was a Kodak moment instead of a 20th century, post-slavery nightmare. She died from tolerating Mr. Pitiful, just to have a man around the house. She died from lack of orgasms because she never learned what made her body happy and no one took the time to teach her
And sometimes, when she found arms that were tender, died because those arms belonged to someone of the same gender.

She died from sacrificing herself for everybody and everything when what she wanted to do was be a singer, a dancer, or some other magnificent other.She died from lies of omission because she didn't want to "bring the black man down." She died from race memories of being snatched and raped and snatched and sold and snatched and bred and snatched and whipped and snatched and worked to death.

She died from tributes from her counterparts who should have been matching her efforts instead of showering her with dead words and empty songs.
She died from myths that would not allow her to show weakness without being chastised by the lazy and hazy. She died from hiding her real feelings until they became hard and bitter enough to invade her womb and breasts like angry tumors.
She died from always lifting something from heavy boxes to refrigerators.

The strong black woman is DEAD

She died from the punishments received from being honest about life, racism and men. She died from being called a bitch for being verbal, a dyke for being assertive and a whore for picking her own lovers. She died for never being enough of what men wanted, or being too much for the men she wanted.

She died from being too black and died again for not being black enough.
She died from castration every time somebody thought of her as only a woman, or treated her like less than a man. She died from being misinformed about her mind, her body and the extent of her royal capabilities. She died from knees pressed too close together because respect was never part of the foreplay being shoved at her.

She died from loneliness in birthing rooms and abandonment in abortion centers. She died of shock in courtrooms where she sat, alone, watching her children being legally lynched. She died in bathrooms with her veins busting open with self-hatred and neglect.

She died in her mind, fighting life, racism and men, while her body was carted away and stashed in a human warehouse for the spiritually mutilated. And sometimes when she refused to die, when she just refused to give in, she was killed by the lethal images of blond hair, blue eyes and flat butts; rejected by the O.J.'s, the Quincy's, the Tiger's and the Poitier's.

Sometimes she was stomped to death by racism and sexism, executed by hi-tech ignorance while she carried the family in her belly, the community on her head, and the race on her back!

Something we all must read to really understand the hurt rape causes....

♥Black women are particularly likely to have sustained numerous assaults on their overall well being, leaving us vulnerable to PSTD when we were assaulted.

♥If friends, family, police, counselors, or hospital workers treat you negatively, their secondary victimization, also called second assault, can further damage your emotional state and cause your healing to take even longer.

♥The rape of enslaved black women reached perhaps it most pathological extremes when slavers decided to "breed" more slaves.

♥Black women were used sexually in a number of ways. Sometimes the masters let their sons sleep with Black women for their first sexual experience.

♥The point is they had no sexual autonomy. And that is the injustice, that Black women did not own their body. Period.

♥This legacy of violence and sexual victimization affects every member of society, but Black women continue to bear more than their share of the fall out.

♥It is not something that families want people to know that their daughters have experienced.

♥"There is this idea that Black women's rapes are not as important as White women's rapes."

♥The racial biases are institutionalized to this day. "Black women's rapes are taken less seriously in the criminal justice system." Recent studies have shown that judges generally impose harsher sentences for rape when the victim is white than when the victim is black.

♥We still buy into several myths. [As] strong Black women, we just can take whatever and move on. And the other one is that we have to take good care of out men. If we take care of our men, then we're not going to report men who are violent

The system is more biased against the black woman that against the black man....

"While the laws in many states define rape as more traumatic and deserving of more severe punishment if a pregnancy results, juries seem to disagree.
If the survivor is black, it is less likely that the accused rapist will plead guilty regardless of his race. Ant it is also, sadly, less likely that the case will be won in a court regardless of his race. LaFree found that our criminal Justice system is prejudiced against black women. It is no wonder that so many black women choose not to report to the police, even thought they may go to the hospital to have injuries treated and for STD and pregnancy prevention.
This prejudice against black women was evident when Desire Washington charged boxer Mike Tyson with raping her. Even black college women were quoted as saying "she got what she deserved." Instead of being sympathetic towards her, they were angry that she had charged a prominent black man with rape."*****

*****Recovering from Rape by Linda E. Ledray, R.N., P.H.D


Some Justice System right????