Wednesday evening, the night before the University’s annual Take Back the Night activities, a group of students and faculty gathered to view “No!,” a documentary about rape and sexual assault in the black community.
The creator, director and producer of the documentary, Aishah Shahidah Simmons introduced the 74 minute film which takes a look at the role of race in relation to sexual assault.
The video focuses on the silence black women are encouraged to maintain after being sexually assaulted and stigmatism that a survivor of sexual abuse receives after coming forward.
The film looks at sexual assault as early as the during times of slavery in the U.S., when it was believed that white slave holders “own[ed] not only [the] physical labors but sexual possessions” of their servants as well.
“No!” gives a historical chronology of the silence surrounding rape and sexual assault in the black community up until current day. Personal testimonies from sexual assault survivors of all ages and circumstances are interjected throughout the work to create an intimate feel to accompany the historical perspective.
One of the main issues addressed in the film was the common view that for a black woman to accuse a black man of sexual assault would make her a “traitor to the race.”
A reoccurring theme throughout the film was the need for black women to stand behind black men regardless of their transgressions, simply to preserve a united front against white oppression. To many, a vocalized complaint of this nature is interpreted as a crippling force against the community and thus silence on the topic was perpetuated.
Individuals interviewed in the documentary admit to feeling torn in fighting for black civil rights alongside men who had violated their women’s rights. In a way, black women during the 1960s were fighting a dual battle for not only civil rights, but sexual freedom as well.
Attention was also paid to the differences between interracial sexual assault and interracial assault. The documentary points out that even in novels written by black writers, such as Richard Wright’s Native Son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the focus is on the rape of white women by black men, rather than black women by black men, even if the latter occurs in the storyline. The taboo of recognizing interracial assault extends into literature as well.
The documentary is a work in progress at this point. The project, which Simmons began in 1994, is ongoing. Simmons, along with her colleagues, is still looking for funding to bring the documentary to completion.
At the conclusion of the screening, a brief discussion was held between Simmons and the audience. Topics raised by members of the audience were the portrayal of celebrities in the media including Kobe Bryant and Mike Tyson and the silence surrounding LGBTQQ people of color and the occurrence of sexual assault by their partners and members of the opposite sex.
“People want to demonize the women. We should be trying to bring them in and nurture them,” Simmons said.
Simmons stresses this point not only about the women in the Tyson and Bryant cases but about children and women who are victims of daily sexual assault crimes that are not covered by the media.
The screening of this documentary and the subsequent dialogue among students, faculty, and Simmons was an effective way to raise awareness about sexual assault while also ushering in Thursday evening’s Take Back the Night activities, according to participants. Take Back the Night is organized every year for students to walk around campus and share reflections and experiences of sexual assault in group “circles.” This year students participated.
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