Our silence will not protect us: Black women confronting sexual and domestic violence

This study examines the lives of Black women confronting sexual and domestic violence through mobilization in the US based anti-rape and battered women's movements. Particular emphasis is placed on elucidating the experiences of Black feminists in general and Black lesbian feminists more specifically. Conditions and dilemmas associated with social movement mobilization, experiences shaped by social movement location and identity, and resistance strategies employed to overcome social movement impediments and confront rape and battering are identified through analysis of 21 in-depth, focused life histories. Structural dilemmas stemming from the changing political economy and cultural conditions, including the development of a gendered-racial oppositional consciousness, direct and/or indirect experiences of rape and/or battering, and the propulsive influence of intimate social networks emerge as central factors framing Black women's anti-violence mobilization. Shared experiential domains include desire for solidarity with other Black women anti-violence agents, coupled with awareness of the limitations of such alliances; ideological and active resistance to social movement processes associated with state co-optation; the salience of race and class in the work of confronting rape and battering, and engagement in what can be termed 'high risk' activism. The range of divergent experience across this sample of women include strategic decisions concerning disclosure of sexual orientation, attachment to anti-violence work that does not extend to predominately white anti-violence organizations, anti-Black racism and persistent marginalization within multiracial groups, and complications associated with the familial character of majority/entirely Black anti-violence groups. Resistance to rape and battering was largely predicated on 'grassroots' social movement expansion or reflective of systems reform. Social movement location of a woman had more of an impact on the resistance tactics she utilized and less of an effect on the importance she attributed to grassroots organizing versus systems reform. The primacy ascribed to race by the women and the necessity for them to adopt 'both/and' stances, because of the contradictions and dilemmas so inextricably linked to anti-violence work, are critical to consider as they have implications for Black women's participation in and transformation of the movement to end violence against women.