A friend of mine, she and her husband were both born and raised originally in the rural south; both black. Both of them are middle-aged and up (her husband is more than 15 years her senior). He and his sister (not sure if there are/were more siblings) are the children of a single woman, a dirtpoor sharecropper. Her husband is, I believe, the youngest child.Talking about family and related, my friend told me one day that her husband's mother had been forcibly raped and sexually abused by the white owner of the farm that she worked, eventually becoming pregnant several times and having at least two children, one being my friend's husband. His mother, in short, was forced to work and submit to repeated acts of rape and sexual abuse her entire life, and her children also worked as sharecroppers on the same farm. My friend's husband, I believe, also did sharecropping work on the same farm.
When sometimes I hear about the legacies of American slavery which apparently officially ended in 1963 (what year did Lincoln issue the proclamation? bad with history details, eh!), it doesn't mean the brutalities ended. Black women and girls (and the rarely discussed aspect of black men and boys) being raped, sexually abused, and bear the children of their rapists while forced to serve them, during slavery continued - continues - to happen. Not always, these days, by whites, but unfortunately perpetuated within family as incest, other horrific abuse, etc. which you know better than me.
Separately my friend was incested when she was a child. She's very soft spoken and shy about some things. She does show various signs of trauma in different fashions, not necessarily attributed only to the incest.
One of the things that bothers her is how much denial there is in the black community that incest happens within, too. She hears many other black men and women truly believe that incest only happens in white families, etc.
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A bit of a friend's story
Date: 2008-02-09 04:42 pm (UTC)A friend of mine, she and her husband were both born and raised originally in the rural south; both black. Both of them are middle-aged and up (her husband is more than 15 years her senior). He and his sister (not sure if there are/were more siblings) are the children of a single woman, a dirtpoor sharecropper. Her husband is, I believe, the youngest child.Talking about family and related, my friend told me one day that her husband's mother had been forcibly raped and sexually abused by the white owner of the farm that she worked, eventually becoming pregnant several times and having at least two children, one being my friend's husband. His mother, in short, was forced to work and submit to repeated acts of rape and sexual abuse her entire life, and her children also worked as sharecroppers on the same farm. My friend's husband, I believe, also did sharecropping work on the same farm.
When sometimes I hear about the legacies of American slavery which apparently officially ended in 1963 (what year did Lincoln issue the proclamation? bad with history details, eh!), it doesn't mean the brutalities ended. Black women and girls (and the rarely discussed aspect of black men and boys) being raped, sexually abused, and bear the children of their rapists while forced to serve them, during slavery continued - continues - to happen. Not always, these days, by whites, but unfortunately perpetuated within family as incest, other horrific abuse, etc. which you know better than me.
Separately my friend was incested when she was a child. She's very soft spoken and shy about some things. She does show various signs of trauma in different fashions, not necessarily attributed only to the incest.
One of the things that bothers her is how much denial there is in the black community that incest happens within, too. She hears many other black men and women truly believe that incest only happens in white families, etc.