Dear Ms. McGuire,
Words cannot describe my reaction to your exposé on the hidden history of the sexual violation of black women by white men.
I am horrified.
I am disgusted.
I am disappointed.
There were literally points in the writing where I thought I could not physically keep reading this because I could not stomach anymore. However, I kept reading. I kept reading because I felt that it was my responsible to know; to become more aware of how far society has come from even 70 years--less than a century--ago, to become more aware of what people like me--Black American women--have had to deal with by living here.
It is the hidden secrets of our nation’s past like this, the epidemic of sexually assaulted black women, that need to be acknowledged and for which atoned. When we think and talk about women being sexually assaulted by men, it is the suppression of information like this that makes too many people automatically assume the discussion is about the victimization of some white middle-class girl.
When I heard about the recent rape case involving Stanford students, I immediately assumed the girl was white. Why? Because those are who society has manipulated the general public into thinking are the only ones facing this issue when involving white men. And when we hear that a black woman has been raped, many of us automatically assume it was by a black man, because why on Earth would a white man rape a black girl. *sarcasm* God forbid such a thing. I think it’s hard enough for the general public to truly accept interracial relationships between black women and white men as normal, rather than an anomaly. The thought of a white man raping a black woman, is just not readily accepted in the general public’s perception.
I am honestly saddened and horrified by this article, and by that I mean it--and you--are amazing for bringing this to light.
Sincerely,
Ruthie Lewis
What I gained from the reading, and what I can see is evident in Ruthie's post above, is that feeling that I believe many African American women have grown to have, and that is the feeling of responsibility to the individual-extrapolated-to-the-larger-community. For, just as McGuire has titled her article, "It was like All of Us Had Been Raped," it is evident to me that when a race has been so demonized, oppressed, and stunted, racial unity is an extremely important coping mechanism. In the same way that racial uplift is viewed, rape, brutality, and violence are too, since we are a minority and must stand together in a country that, if it could, would obliterate our existence. Thus, I am compelled by Ruthie's post, but also would like to refer back to Higginbotham's Metalanguage of Race and explore to a greater extent how this rhetoric has been important to minorities in times of both victory and hurt.
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