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RAPE AND RACIAL APPRAISALS

Culture, Intersectionality, and Black Women's Accounts of Sexual Assault1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2013

C. Shawn McGuffey
C. Shawn McGuffey*
Affiliation:
Departments of Sociology and African and African Diaspora Studies, Boston College
*
C. Shawn McGuffey, Boston College, Department of Sociology and African & African Diaspora Studies, McGuinn Hall, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467. E-mail: mcguffey@bc.edu
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Abstract

Using Black women's responses to same-race sexual assault, I demonstrate how scholars can use interpersonal violence to understand social processes and develop conceptual models. Specifically, I extend the concept of racial appraisal by shifting the focus from how indirect victims (e.g., family and friends) use race to appraise a traumatic event to how survivors themselves deploy race in the aftermath of rape. Relying on 111 interviews with Black women survivors in four cities, I analyze how race, gender, and class intersect and contour interpretations of sexual assault. I argue that African Americans in this study use racially inscribed cultural signifiers to root their understandings of rape within a racist social structure (i.e., a racial appraisal)—which they also perceive as sexist and, for some, classist—that encourages their silence about same-race sexual assault. African and Caribbean immigrants, however, often avoid the language of social structure in their rape accounts and use cultural references to distance themselves from African Americans. Last, I discuss the implications of my findings for Black feminist/intersectional theory.

Keywords

Black immigrantsBlack womencognitioncultureintersectionalityracial appraisalrape
Type
State of the Art
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 2013 , pp. 109 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2013 

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Footnotes

1

The author would like to thank Joya Misra, Amy Wilkins, and Robert Zussman for helpful feedback and encouragement. I would also like to acknowledge Penny Alexander for her tireless assistance in the development of training materials and design. The research team members were extremely thoughtful, and I thank you all for the sensitivity, grace, and respect that you bestowed upon the sexual assault survivors. And most of all I am grateful for the courage and time of the survivors. I know these stories were not easy to tell. I wish all of you the best on your various journeys.

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