Linda L. Ammons,
excerpted From: Babies, Bath Water, Racial Imagery And Stereotypes: The African
-American Woman And The Battered Woman Syndrome , 1995 Wisconsin Law
Review 1003-1080, 1017-1030 (1995) (275 Footnotes omitted)
"She is a Negro; look at her skin; if she is not a Negro, I
don't want you to convict her."
Women in America are violated by their current or former partners at
such an alarming rate that domestic violence is considered epidemic.
Annually, women, as compared to men, experience over ten times as many
incidents of violence by an intimate. According to the National
Institute of Health, in the mid-1980s homicide was the leading cause of
death among African-Americans. Some studies indicate that black women
rank second in the frequency of arrests for murder. The typical victim
of a black female who kills is a black male with whom she had a
Until recently, the public, criminal justice agencies, and the courts
have ignored the plight of the battered woman. Battered women are not
believed either because society has historically been in denial about
the terrorism that occurs in the home, or because abused women who do
not leave their partners are thought to be lying about the seriousness
of the abuse they suffered. Black women face similar hurdles, but
additionally they must overcome the presumption that their race
predisposes them to engage in and enjoy violence. "(P)olice
trainees are frequently told that physical violence is an acceptable
part of life among .ghetto residents."' In other words, blacks are
"normal primitives," or violence-prone. African-American women
who are battered face unique challenges in getting relief and support.
For example, when black women are treated for domestic violence related
injuries in inner-city hospitals, protocols for wife beating are
"rarely introduced or followed." Trusting health-care
providers with their stories of abuse is difficult because black women
have often felt that systems do not have their best interests at heart.
However, when the provider is sensitive to their needs they will reveal
their stories of abuse. Julie Blackman, a psychologist, illustrated how
the mental health system deals with black and white women in abusive
relationships by contrasting the Hedda Nussbaum-Joel Steinberg case with
that of Frances and Herman McMillian. Nussbaum was the battered lover of
Steinberg. Lisa, Steinberg's daughter, was also abused. When Lisa was
killed in a battering episode, Nussbaum turned state's evidence against
her lover. Steinberg was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree,
and sentenced to a maximum term of eight and one-third to twenty-five
years. Nussbaum was never charged and was given the psychiatric and
social services support she needed.
On the other hand, Frances McMillian, a poor black woman who was
arrested for endangering the welfare of her children, was denied
treatment by the same facilities. McMillian and her nine children lived
in a two-room apartment in the Bronx with an abusive husband and father,
Herman McMillian. The family was discovered because of a fire. When
Blackman attempted to get Mrs. McMillian admitted to the treatment
facilities that had treated Nussbaum, they would not accept her.
I tried repeatedly to reach the psychiatrist who had been most
directly involved in Hedda's treatment. Hedda's lawyer encouraged him
to take Frances and reminded him that he ought not exclude Frances
just because she was Black. I never did speak to Hedda's psychiatrist
about Frances, but his treatment facility decided to reject her
The district attorney took nine misdemeanor counts to a grand jury
even though he was "sympathetic to her condition." McMillian
Battered African-American women are also particularly vulnerable
because of the lack or the underutilization of resources. For example,
African-American women hesitate to seek help from shelters because they
believe that shelters are for white women. Because the shelters are
associated with the women's movement, and many black women are estranged
from women's politics, they may feel that only white women's interests
are served in the shelters. African-American women are not totally
mistaken in this assumption. A study of the shelter movement in America
led a researcher to conclude that black women are ignored in the
policymaking, planning and implementation of shelter services. The lack
of community outreach in black neighborhoods by the shelters also
contributes to the perception that the safe havens are not for women of
color. Finally, black women have found the shelter environment
inhospitable to their cultural differences.
When leaving shelters, black women are more likely to need health
care, material goods and help with their children. A National Institute
of Health funded study of sixty battered African-American women over an
eight month period found that black women remained in shelters for a
significantly longer time than their white counterparts before they
could get the necessary resources to start over. Racism also affected
the ability of some black women to leave. For example, African-American
women would be quoted an apartment rental price over the phone, only to
have that price raised when the landlord met the women. White social
service personnel would sometimes patronize, ignore or exhibit hostility
toward black women.
African-American women depend on informal networks and seek support
through prayer, personal spirituality, and the clergy. The
African-American church is a traditional source of strength. Pastors
(typically male), are a central authority figure in many black
communities. However, misinformed ministers may overemphasize the value
placed on suffering as a test from God. Further, some clergy have
misconstrued biblical principles of love, forgiveness and submission to
reinforce sexism and subordination which can be used to justify abuse.
Black female parishioners are often told from the pulpit to protect the
black male because he is an endangered species.
The inconsistency of police intervention and the lack of other
community resources, including hospitals, contribute to the acuteness of
violence in African-American neighborhoods. Black women may have to
resort to more extreme violence to resolve a battering situation because
the police are not interested. African-American women have no historical
basis for believing that the world is just and fair and therefore
traditional institutions are viewed with great skepticism. Professionals
who work with black, battered women provide a unique perspective on how
race affects the issue. Kenyari Bellfield, a shelter worker, describes
the predicament of battered African-American women:
(A)long with the actual experience of psychological and physical
abuse, women of color suffer from the complex phenomenon of racism. The
translation of racial oppression to women of color who are battered
stems from the basic assumption that people of color are inherently more
violent. For a woman of color who is battered, an overwhelming sense of
hopelessness and low self- esteem are the result. The effects of racism
and sexism seem too great to tackle in the face of having been
victimized by a loved one. The very system which has historically served
to subjugate and oppress her is the only system which can save her from
the immediate abusive situation.
Cooperating with authorities in prosecuting her abuser could result
in community abandonment or scorn because of the perception that black
men are selectively penalized. Further, black battered women may connect
the physical abuse with racism. Some feel that they become the object of
their partner's rage triggered by the persistent maltreatment of black
males by the greater society, and therefore the abuser is less culpable.
Novelist Alice Walker describes the motivation and rationalization of an
abusive male character in her work, The Third Life of Grange Copeland:
His crushed pride, his battered ego, made him drive Mem away from
school teaching . . . .It was his rage at himself, and his life and his
world that made him beat her for an imaginary attraction she aroused in
other men, crackers, although she was not a party to any of it. His rage
and his anger and his frustration ruled. His rage could and did blame
everything, everything on her.
The loyalty trap affects the ability of black women to seek
protection and effective counseling. For example, African-American women
do not feel comfortable discussing their problems in integrated
settings. The fear is that disclosure in some way may hurt the
community. Therefore the prohibition against airing dirty laundry
becomes more important than healing. Emma Jordan Coleman describes the
dilemma abused black women face as a "Hobbesian choice between
claiming individual protection as a member of her gender and race or
contributing to the collective stigma upon her race if she decides to
report the . . . misdeeds of a black man to white authority
The justice system has not rushed to protect black women who have
been beaten. Analogies to rape and other gender discriminatory practices
illustrate how black female victimization has been and remains
unimportant. White men have had carte blanche access to all women.
Heinous crimes have been committed in the name of protecting white
womanhood. Interracial sexual or physical assault (e.g., minority
male/white female) still produces outrage that is not comparable to any
other kind of inter- or intra racial adult abuse. For example, the same
week that the highly-publicized rape of the affluent, white Central Park
jogger by several Hispanic and black males took place, twenty-eight
other first-degree rapes or attempted rapes took place in New York City.
Donald Trump purchased full-page ads in the New York Times, The Daily
News, The New York Post, and New York Newsday to denounce the men who
had committed the violent acts. Trump spent $85,000 for the
advertisements. In response to Trump, black clergy published their own
ad, stating that Trump was trying to divide the city into two camps with
a thinly veiled polemic. Another article reported that two weeks after
the Central Park incident, a thirty- eight year old black woman was
forced off a Brooklyn street at knife- point by two men, taken to a
rooftop, raped, beaten, and thrown fifty feet to the ground. The woman
sustained abdominal injuries, two broken ankles, and a fractured right
leg. This attack did not receive the national notice of the Central Park
jogger case and there was no ad from Donald Trump. Three men went to
prison for the crime.
Assumptions about sexual stratification explain why reactions to
sexual assault differ. Criminologist Anthony Walsh provides the
1. Women are viewed as the valued and scarce property of the men of
their own race.
2. White women, by virtue of membership in the dominant race, are
more valuable than black women.
3. The sexual assault of a white by a black threatens both the white
man's "property rights" and his dominant social position. This
dual threat accounts for the strength of the taboo attached to
inter-racial sexual assault.
4. A sexual assault by a male of any race upon members of the less
valued black race is perceived as nonthreatening to the status quo, and
therefore less serious.
5. White men predominate as agents of social control. Therefore they
have the power to sanction differently according to the perceived threat
to their favored social position.
In other words, black women's bodies are not as valuable as their
white female counterparts. . . .