The Violence We Silently Endure As Black Women
When you’re a black woman, sometimes protecting someone you love takes over your pain.
Leave him, I begged.
A few years ago, I lived in a tiny apartment next to a young couple. They were black and in their late 20s. They were always fighting. For one year, I heard the woman’s screams, her pleadings, “Please stop hitting me. Please, please, please…”
He hit her when she came home. He hit her if he saw her talking with the pizza delivery guy.
“So much violence. So much rage.”
Leave him, I begged.
But she just shrugged her shoulders and averted her eyes. Once she confided in me in the hallway. “I love him,” she whispered. “It’s just how it is,” she continued. “No, intimate relationships are not supposed to be abusive,” I pleaded. For a minute, she seemed to be listening, but then she walked to her apartment.
Every night I put on my headphones to tune out the fights I could hear through the thin walls. So much violence. So much rage. Every night I wondered why she stayed with someone who abused her. Whenever I heard cop sirens on the street, I wondered whether they were coming to the apartment next door. I wondered if she finally dared to call the cops. I wondered… Has he hit her into oblivion? Is she lying on her bed or floor unconscious? Is she gasping for breath right at this moment?
One late afternoon, I found her lying on her living room floor with her door open. Her body was still. Too still. I screamed. I rushed to her while fumbling for my phone in my purse. “This is 911. What’s your emergency?” I shouted the apartment address and that my neighbor was unconscious.
“Do you know how long she has been unconscious?”
“No, I don’t know. I just returned to my apartment from work and I found her lying in the middle of her living room.”
Neighbors who lived on the same floor who heard my scream barged in.
“He finally did it. He killed her.”
“We should have intervened.”
“We have intervened, Maria. Remember? She said she didn’t want to press charges against her boyfriend.”
“But still…”
Our elderly neighbors, Maria and George, who lived down the hall, held her unmoving hands and kept arguing over her still body. Maria mumbled, “You’ll be alright, dear. Help is on the way. Just hang on.”
After 5 minutes, which seemed like they lasted for eternity, the paramedics came.
When they carried her outside on a gurney, my legs could no longer support my upper body. I crumbled on the cold pavement. Two police cars stood in front of the apartment building. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the young black man crossing the street and coming toward the apartment building. He was fidgeting. His hands made a fist. He kept unclenching them and clenching them again. Then his hands kept rubbing his chest.
Even though we were devastated by this black man for abusing someone he claimed to love, we were also terrified for this black man. We were terrified the situation would escalate. We were terrified the police would put this young man in jail for life.
Worse, we were terrified he would be shot right in front of us.
When the police rushed to the young black man’s side, George and Maria and a few black people who lived in the apartment also rushed to the young man’s side. Disgusted with his abuse cannot even explain what we felt.
But.
We also wanted to protect him. To protect him from a system that sees black people – especially black men – as criminals. As unworthy. Put them in jail and ask them for their crimes, later on, the system says. Assume they’re criminals, the system says.
When the young black woman woke up later in the hospital, she didn’t press charges.
It’s time to talk about the violence we silently endure as black women.
A few days ago, I read Treva B. Lindsey’s article on Bustle, “It’s Time To Talk About the Violence We silently Endure As Black Women”
Reading this piece brought back memories. It reminded me of that young black woman who endured violence silently. Who refused to press charges against her abuser.
I no longer live in that apartment. I no longer hear those bone-chilling screams from that black woman all night. I don’t know where she lives or how she is doing now. Or whether she is still living with the black man who abused her daily.
I’m a black woman. I have never lived with someone who abused me. But I get why the black woman’s instinct had been to endure the violence silently. For years. Why she told the police, “I’m not going to press charges,” when she woke up in the hospital.
She was probably terrified of what would happen to her boyfriend if she pressed charges. When black women call cops in distress, situations often escalate. The bad situation quickly turns into the worst situation. The bad situation often results in sending the victims themselves to jail or fatal outcomes.
Remember Ma’Khia Bryant?
She was a 16-year-old black girl when a police officer killed her within moments of arriving on the scene. The foster home she lived with her sister was abusive. For weeks, she and her sister have been asking for someone to help them. People who came to the foster home gave Bryant the creeps. She was terrified of being violated by them or by people within her foster home.
She was terrified for her sister.
Bryant only wanted a safe place. A safe place where she could be a black teenager. Where her sister could be a black teenager. She just wanted to sleep at night without waking up from the smallest sound in the hallway. Without fearing someone would sneak into their rooms and violate her or her sister in the dead of the night.
No one bothered to hear the sisters’ cries. No one came to their foster home to check their stories. No one bothered to listen. No one came to take them away to a safe place.
No one cared.
When Bryant’s sister tried once more to get some help from the police, they shot Bryant.
Tears flood my eyes whenever I think of the killing of Ma’Khia Bryant.
The courage Bryant’s sister had to call the police brings me to my knees.
Put yourself in Bryant’s shoes:
Your home is not safe. No one believes you. The police dismiss your wails. They don’t think your cries for help are legitimate. They think you’re making the violence up. Worse, they think you are a criminal. They think you’re the one who is starting these fights in your foster home.
No wonder black girls and women endure violence silently. No wonder we rarely pick up the phone to call the police or we take a long time to call the police.
Even then, we pray.
We pray our situation doesn’t get worse. We pray a police officer would believe our story. We pray someone actually listens to us. We pray a police officer would not reach for his gun when he sees the color of our skin.
When you’re a black woman, sometimes protecting someone you love takes over your pain.
Your abuse. You don’t know what the police are going to do to your black man.
What if they shoot him?
When you’re a black woman, you can’t just call the police and hope everything will turn out okay. You might end up in jail yourself. Being accused of starting those fights. Or worse, you might be shot on the scene like Ma’Khia Bryan.
Like most women who think their abusers would change and love would conquer all, I’m sure that the black woman who was my neighbor believed her boyfriend would change his ways. She believed he would stop raising his hand to her. She believed he would stop shouting at her.
But as a young black woman, she was also probably protecting someone she loved.
From. The. Police
As black women, we try to protect. Protect that someone we love even when he abuses us. We don’t know what will happen when we call the police. Even if we don’t feel safe in our homes, even if someone we love abuses us, we also don’t feel safe calling the police.
They might come barging through the door and shoot us or someone we love on sight. Just because the color of our skin is black.
Further reading…
America, Goddam, Treva B. Lindsey
And now to a few articles I read this week worth mentioning…
Not this again, I thought when I read, Police asked a black couple to prove they owned their store.
How black women musicians are reframing country music.
Do you live in New York? Or do you have a friend or a family member who lives in New York? Check out this New York public library which is supporting the right to read banned books.