RACE AND LAW

Race and Law

Race and Law

Answer 1

Victims of sexual violence are men and women, of all races and ethnicities, rich and poor, young and old. Statistics identify that sexual assault/rape happen between members of the same race much more frequently than across races. This myth comes from social messages of racism that are alive and thriving today. In fact, the historical experiences of interracial assault more often point to women of color being systematically assaulted by white men. Consider the history of slave women in the South and women in countries overrun by conquering armies.

National victimization surveys (NCVS and NVAW) find much higher sexual violence victimization for women. Female victims also dominate arrest statistics and are more than 90% of the clients seeking help at sexual violence service agencies. For less severe forms of sexual violence, the ratio of victims between men and women is roughly equal. Most of these comparisons are based only on measures of physical violence (Johnson, 2006).

The National Violence Against Women (NVAW) Survey is a recent, comprehensive large-scale examination of adult and childhood sexual abuse. Using the definition of rape outlined previously (i.e., sexually penetrative behavior perpetrated against a person's will, by force, or without consent), 17.6% of women and 3% of men reported that they had been the victim of attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. Comparing overall prevalence rates for Caucasians (17.7%) and non-Caucasians (19.8%), there is little difference in reported experiences of completed or attempted rape. There also is no difference between Caucasian men and non-Caucasian men regarding rape victimization. However, the use of the umbrella term non-Caucasian does little to illuminate the unique differences in the prevalence of rape among specific minority groups, and, in fact, it may conceal differences that exist among groups, thereby limiting the degree of assistance afforded to particular minority groups.

In fact, reducing the umbrella term non-Caucasian into more specific categories—African American, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and mixed race—highlights significant differences. Compared to Caucasian women who had been raped (17.7%), about 34% of American Indian and Alaska Native women, 24.4% of mixed-race women, 8.8% of African American women, and 6.8% of Asian and Pacific Islander women reported that they had been raped.

These prevalence rates highlight the widespread victimization of adults by sexual abusers. In the NVAW survey, almost 10% of women and 1% of men reported having been raped since the ...