Molestation, Incest and Rape in African American Families

e at risk of being sexually abused. As the lid is slowly unscrewed and removed, it is becoming
more apparent that sexual perversion and incest is alive and well within the black community. In
fact, a study revealed that black women are 1.75 times more likely to have experienced Child
Sexual Abuse (CSA) than white women who grew up in a two-parent household (Amodeo,
Griffin, Fassler, Clay, & Ellis, 2006). What was interesting is the fact that a mother working long
hours, or the presence of a stepfather, did not increase the risk of CSA.
There is a pathological behavior within the black community that is a direct result of chattel
slavery — the inexplicable need for the black woman to protect the black male (Pollard-Terry,
2004; Doane & Hodges, 2009). In the sense of culture, the black race is the only major racial
group that functions primarily as a matriarchy, meaning that there are more homes with children
that are under the leadership of women than there are homes with families under the leadership
of men (Doane & Hodges, 2009). The narrative that has endured for far too long is the idea that
sexually aberrant behavior, is the result of the aberrant nature of a female led household
(Moynihan, 1965). Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in his 1965 report on the black family entitled, The
Negro Family: A Case for National Action, while having some immensely valid points,
presented the erroneous assertion that the black family is the “center of the tangle of pathology,”
with a weak family structure (meaning that the family was headed by a female) (Moynihan,
1965).
While I will concede that the failure for the black family nucleus to sustain the proper balance
and role assignment has contributed to the current state of confusion and disarray in the black
collective, I must strongly suggest that we examine the deeper, underlying causes for the
behaviors that produced the imbalance in the first place. While the lack of male leadership has
created its own set of challenges, it is not exclusively culpable for the aberrant behavior that
takes place in black families.
When it comes to the culture of silence within the black community that casts a veneer over the
perverted proclivities of many black men to sexually violate the children in their family, one
must be willing to trace the desire and need of the African American female to protect the black
man. The African American community has an old adage that states: “Black women raise their
daughters and love their sons.” What this means is that black women, during slavery, developed
a proclivity to rear and teach their daughters, but conversely, they sheltered and protected their
sons. Since the arrival of the first slave ship on the shores of the North American continent, there
has been no person or group that has been consistently under the threat of harm and death at the
level of the black man. This has lead black women to be more inclined to coddle boys and more
reluctant to report incest and rape perpetuated by black men (Pollard-Terry, 2004).
It is important to note here that while I am pointing to behavior that is highly detrimental to the
effective empowerment of our youth and our people in general, I am not aligning myself with the
idea of mainstream psychology and sociology in its assertion that family structure is the sole
cause of economic castration, socioeconomic dysfunctionality and aberrant, antisocial and
inadequate behavior among African Americans. When this much gravity is placed on the family
structure in determining the causality of the social and economic marginality of poor black
families, the more distant cause of slavery (including its aftermath) is virtually ignored (Doane &