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Violence
  Domestic Violence
  Sexual Violence
  Conclusion and Suggested Questions

As a result of the intersection of racist and sexist stereotypes, women of color often face more difficulty accessing justice and support after suffering domestic and sexual violence. In addition, in some cases, sexualized stereotypes about their behavior leaves women of color more vulnerable to sexual violence. However, current U.S. laws do not ensure justice for women of color experiencing violence and they do not ensure that such women can access the services, such as shelters and counseling, that are necessary to recover from domestic and sexual violence.

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Domestic Violence

Domestic violence occurs among members of all race-ethnicities and all social classes. Women of color, however, face particular concerns that exacerbate their experience of domestic violence.18 Increased rates of poverty, lack of education, limited job prospects, language barriers, fear of deportation and discriminatory attitudes of law enforcement enhance the difficulty women of color face in escaping domestic violence. For example, African American women account for 16 percent of the women who have been physically abused by a husband or partner in the last five years, but were the victims in more than 53 percent of the violent deaths that occurred in 1997.19 Current domestic violence laws in the United States largely fail to address the particular vulnerability of women of color. For instance, police, prosecutors and judges, who are still predominantly European American, often hold discriminatory attitudes about other cultures, which may or may not implicitly condone violence against women of such backgrounds, and fail to take the legally required action to protect abused women.20

• Leticia, an undocumented Filipina woman, went to civil court and obtained a restraining order against her physically abusive husband. When her husband came to her house, violating the order, she called the police and he fled before they arrived. The officer who responded made a report and asked her for her green card, exposing her to deportation. See Immigrant Women’s Task Force of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Hands that Shape the World.
• Maria, a Dominican woman in her fifties, finally fled from her husband after years of abuse. “One time I had eight stitches in my head, and a gash on the other side of my head, and he broke my ribs. He would bash my head against the wall while we had sex. He kept threatening to kill me.” Michelle J. Anderson, A License to Abuse: The Impact of Conditional Status on Female Immigrants, 102 YALE L.J. 1401 (1993) (citing Vivienne Walt, Immigrant Abuse: Nowhere to Hide; Women Fear Deportation, Experts Say, NEWSDAY, 8 (Dec. 2, 1990)). She stayed with her husband because he was a U.S. citizen, and she thought he was her only hope of obtaining permanent residence status for herself. She left her husband, filed charges against him, and obtained a protection order. When he saw her on the street, he told her he had her immigration papers. She went to his apartment because she knew she needed those papers. “He beat me on the head. He sat on my stomach. He put a knife to my throat and raped me. Then he threw me naked on the street.” Id.

In some cases, abusers have relied on the “cultural defense” to mitigate their sentencing in their criminal and civil court defense.21 The “cultural defense” allows a judge or jury to take into consideration the fact that the abuser is from another culture with a different set of norms that allegedly sanction violence against women. While a recognition of difference is important, in the context of domestic abuse it has often served to perpetuate the subordination and victimization of women of color as it usually applies the same rationale of responding to adultery that historically functioned as an excuse for domestic violence against all women, including European American women.

Although the cultural defense is only formally used with immigrant women, it also is applied informally to women who were born in the United States. Decisions to arrest, prosecute and convict often rest upon attitudes that do not take seriously the violence against women of color because of racist or sexist attitudes that “their culture” is just like that.22 Consequently, women of color who are victims of domestic violence often find themselves trapped in a system too willing to blame them for their own suffering and too unwilling to intervene in people’s private lives.

Finally, women of color may experience understandable reluctance to subject their loved ones to a criminal justice system that they see as racially prejudiced. Yet, as a result of cultural, racial and linguistic discrimination they are often unable to access necessary support services necessary to escape a violent relationship without criminal intervention. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA),23 which was renewed in October 2000, represents a critical and unprecedented effort to redress and prevent domestic violence. VAWA does provide for battered immigrant women to have alternate ways to secure legal residency apart from through their abusive partners, which may protect a higher percentage of women of color. Also, the 2000 amendments increased funding specifically for Native American women; 5 percent of several grants funded through VAWA are set aside for tribes. Nonetheless, that is the sum total of VAWA’s approach with women of color.

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Sexual Violence

Women of color still face racist and discriminatory attitudes about women’s sexuality that result in reduced access to justice for women of color who have experienced sexual violence. “Propaganda against [women of color] may not only render them likely targets of sexualized violence, it may also contribute to the tendency of many people to doubt their truthfulness when they attempt to seek the protection of the authorities.”24 Such attitudes contribute to the perpetuation of rape and other forms of sexual violence, to the failure of police officers and prosecutors to hold violators accountable, and to disparate sentences between European American perpetrators and perpetrators of color as well as between European American victims and victims of color. For example, a study of rape cases in Dallas showed that the average prison term for a man convicted of raping an African American woman was two years, as compared to five years for the rape of a Latina and ten years for the rape of a European American woman. More disturbing, jurors are less likely to believe the defendant is guilty if the victim is a woman of color, for example, because jurors are “influenced by stereotypes of black women as more likely to consent to sex or as more sexually experienced and hence less harmed by the assault.”26

For the same reasons women of color are subjected to domestic violence and become entrapped in abusive relationships, women of color fear coming forward to report rape and sexual abuse.27 They often fear the stigma of rape that can expose them and their families to shame and even destroy a woman’s chances at marriage and may, in the case of immigrant women, subject them to exposure to INS officials.

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Conclusion and Suggested Questions

Because of the persistent stereotypes about women of color and outright discrimination, women of color suffer from violence in unique ways and they are less willing and able to avail themselves of available legal protections. Nonetheless, the legal justice system in the United States continues to fail to address the particular issues that women of color face when confronted with domestic and sexual violence, and thus, has failed to provide adequate protection for these women.

• What steps has the federal government taken to ensure that VAWA includes provision to provide services for women of color?
• What studies has the federal government conducted or requested from state government to collect disaggregated data on prosecution of domestic and sexual violence against women of color?

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Footnotes
18 Kimberle Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins: Instersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, 43 STANFORD L.R. 1241 (1993).
19 107, 1st 147 Cong Rec H 1003 3/20/01.
20 Barbara Fedders, Lobbying for Mandatory-Arrest Policies: Race, Class, and the Politics of the Battered Women’s Movement, 23 N.Y.U. REV.L. & SOC. CHANGE 281 (1997).
21 Alice J. Gallin, The Cultural Defense: Undermining the Policies Against Domestic Violence, 35 B.C. L. REV. 723 (1994).
22 See, Crenshaw, supra.
23 Violence Against Women Act, 42 U.S.C.S. § 13981 (2001).
24 Kimberle Crenshaw, Gender-related Aspects of Racial Discrimination, United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, Expert Group Meeting on Gender and Racial Discrimination, 21-24 November 2000, EGM/GRD/2000/WP.1
25 Race Tilts the Scales of Justice, Dallas Times Herald (1990).
26 Cary LaFree, Rape and Criminal Justice: The Social Construction of Sexual Assault at 219-20 (1989) as quoted in Kimberle Crenshaw supra at 1279.
27 Patricia Hill Collins articulates the dilemma of African American rape victims,“[e]ven though current statistics indicate that Black women are more likely to be victimized than white women, Black women are less likely to report their rapes, less likely to have their cases come to trial, and less likely to have their trials result in convictions, and … less likely to seek counseling and other support services.” Patricia Hill Collins Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, 178 (1990).

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