Situating Familial, Intimate, and Acquaintance Violence Against Black Girls and Women in the Movement for Black Lives

• In Event: Centering Black Women's Lives in the Matter of Justice: Where Do We Go From Here?

Abstract

This paper addresses how familial, intimate, and acquaintance violence against Black women and girls can and should be (better) attended to in the Movement for Black Lives (a.k.a. Black Lives Matter Movement). While the Movement has brought meaningful and necessary attention to disproportionate and excessive State/police violence against Black men and boys, attention has moved even further away from familial, intimate, and acquaintance violence against Black women and girls. Many Black girls and women continue to live with the detriments of violence by a familiar, yet there is no movement behind them to combat these assaults on their minds and bodies and to address the transgressors, who are often part of the girls’ and women’s families and communities and of the same racial identity. Familial, intimate, and acquaintance violence against Black girls and women can certainly be addressed by many of the mandates of activists and collectives in the Movement; however, there do not appear to be initiatives geared in this direction, and only pre-existing (pre-“Ferguson”) localized groups have maintained this focus (e.g., INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence).

Author

• Hillary Potter, University of Colorado Boulder