I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation (Prophetic Christianity)

by Chanequa Walker-Barnes

Many discussions about rape and race follow much the same script. Consequently, women of color who experience rape are silenced, and White women remain the iconic victim. “The historical experience of Black men has so completely occupied the dominant conceptions of racism and rape that there is little room to squeeze in the experiences of Black women. . . . The fact that Black men have often been falsely accused of raping white women underlies the antiracist defense of Black men accused of rape even when the accuser herself is a Black woman.”105 This patriarchal bias has led many antiracist advocates to overlook the fact that depictions of sexual aggression among both men and women of color have been critical to defending systems of social control such as slavery, mass incarceration, and anti-immigration laws. It is certainly true that accusations of rape have been used as a form of social control and a tool of terror against men of color. But it is also true that actual rape has been (and continues to be) used by men to police, punish, and control the bodies of women of color.