College Voices
America’s Double Standards On Race And Sexual Assault
A man named Mark Twain once said, “There are many humorous things in the world—among them is the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”
These words are indicative of the prevalent issues regarding how America views black and white men differently when addressing sexual assault.
In the era of the Me Too Movement, President Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and many other conservatives have professed their concerns about boys and men enduring false sexual assault accusations.
The movement has drawn praise and applauds from many people for demanding more awareness and accountability for sexual assault. However, sexual assault still has many Americans divided on this issue today.
African-American males still must live with a disparaging myth today as old as the Civil War, invented by European settlers, declaring that most rapes are committed against white women by black men.
Ford Bend Women’s Center stated that “Statistics verified that 80-90% of all sexual assault offenders are a member of the same racial class as the survivor in all violent crimes.
In fact, when the perpetrator belongs to a different race than his victim, he is more inclined to be a white man sexually assaulting a woman of color rather than a man of color sexually assaulting a white woman.”
The United States has a bleak extensive history with sexual assault. In the era of the Civil War, African American women did not receive any legal protection from sexual violence externalized on them by White men.
The Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence Organization has declared that women of color are frequently referred to as “promiscuous” and “hypersexual.” The media’s constant caricatures depicting women of color as “jezebels” only purports the exposition that they are never victims of sexual assault because they are readily engaging in sexual acts.
The organization also reported “The ethnicity of women who are raped in their lifetime: 17.9 percent are Caucasian, 11.9 are Latina, 18.8 are African-American, 34.1 percent are Native American or Alaskan Native, 6.8 percent are Asian or Pacific Islander, and 24.4 percent are mixed race.”
In the instance involving exonerations by race and crime, the National Registry of Exonerations acknowledged African-Americans and Hispanics are overwhelming wrongfully convicted than exonerated for crimes such as murder, sexual assault, child sex abuse, robbery, other violent crimes, drug crimes, and other non-violent crimes.
“There was thirty-four percent of Hispanic men and fifty-nine percent of African-American men convicted of sexual assault, but then exonerated.
African-Americans have represented virtually half of the innocent individuals falsely convicted of crimes. These individuals were later exonerated since 1989, even though they are only thirteen percent of the population.”
By: Shamar H. English
