The statistics say that 40% of Black women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime and 58% of Black women will experience Psychological abuse, this whole thing of Black women and these types of things not happening to us, or we don’t play that is a misnomer because so often, many don’t know what they are in the middle of, many don’t know what it looks like, and I want them to be aware. Courageous Fire LLC was founded in June of 2019. I was still working for a non-profit and was unable to do much, but I did an enormous amount of research and while researching, I found all this information not just about women, but Black women and this is the number one health issue for us. That was staggering for me to learn. It’s not diabetes or heart disease for us, it’s abuse. Here are three reasons why this is happening so much for Black women. 1. The strong Black woman stereotype. There is no reason for me to talk about a struggle or a challenge or a problem because I’m strong and I can handle it. The flip side of that is we are viewed that way also, it’s not just the self-perception we aren’t viewed as victims so if a black woman says this is what happened to me, immediately or if she tries to resist, we become the violent aggressor. I read Marissa Alexanders story and it infuriated me. She had been abused physically by her partner for years the man was in the process of trying to be abusive in that very moment. She purposefully fired a warning shot next to him at the wall to make him back away from her. She received a sentence of twenty years in prison for a warning shot. When we talk about Lorena Bobbitt, we all thought back in the day that case was funny. She mutilated a man and what happened? Nothing because she is a real victim, and a black woman is angry, aggressive, and upset. I looked in the comments in one of Marissa Alexanders TEDx videos there was comment after comment stating, “yeah, they both were aggressive,” “she is leaving out parts of the story those are the parts that got her convicted,” “let’s just say what it really is, she is just violent.” That’s the number one reason we don’t say anything. 2. We are afraid of backlash from 911. Jacob Blake, it happened just last year from all and everything I read about that story it was a domestic violence situation and she did call the police, but she was not looking for them to shoot him seven times. She simply wanted to be safe; wasn’t trying to give him a death sentence. People act as though it’s ok to overlook the fact that at one point you were in a relationship with this person at some point you loved them, and you thought they loved you. This was my struggle with the whole no contact order because no one could give me a clear answer on whether or not at that time was going to have some sort of record that people would see and even though he tortured our entire family for thirteen years I still didn’t want him to struggle as a black man with trying to get himself together if he was ever going to do it. Having a restraining order strapped to his back, I didn’t want that to happen. More than once I’ve had people over the course of my adult life talk to me all of them black women about different types of domestic violence and I will never forget one of my dearest friends telling me how she and her husband spent the night in jail when she was pregnant. If he beats on me and I try to defend myself and I wear nails he’s probably going to get scratched so now I can’t defend myself or my unborn child. I’m supposed to get The URBAN EXPERIENCE | 2021 47
48 Publizr Home