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I think sexual abuse and dating and all that is different for white women. White women are usually put up on a pedestal. With the black woman it only takes one smudge, and you carry that smudge with you for the rest of our life. Most white women feel that black women should be used to being raped. When I was going to high school, I went to a racially mixed school. When we got to studying the Civil war, most of the white girls I went to school with felt that black women enjoyed sleeping with the masters. To me that was something that was passed on to them by their families. I figure that’s how the white man justified raping black women back then; it was okay because “they enjoyed it.”

When we discussed slavery in school, sometimes I would lash out and say, “How would you feel if a man mad you go to bed with him and then beat you in the morning? What would you do? Would you try to fight him off by say no knowing you were going to get a worse whipped and maybe even hung? Or would you submit and surrender?” I made my classmates stop and think. They had never thought of it in those terms.

But I look at it now and I feel that that’s how a lot of white people feel about black women—that they are used to being raped. So for us black women, it’s really no big thing. I still think a lot of white people feel that black women shouldn’t be upset about rape. But it hurts us just as deeply as it hurts white women. We just find other ways to cope. We turn to other black women for help, and hope somebody will listen.

Black women tend to keep quiet about rape and abuse. I guess we feel we have to keep quiet about it. It’s just something within us that says, “It’s not to be talked about.” If you talk about it, a man will think it was your fault, or he’ll think less of you. I think that’s why I never told the men in my life, because I’ve always been afraid they would not look at me in the same way.