(Re)turning to “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women”: A Black Feminist Forum on the Culture of Dissemblance

Abstract

Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: A Commemoration (Re)turning to "Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women": A Black Feminist Forum on the Culture of Dissemblance Shoniqua Roach O ne of the most remarked upon but least analyzed themes in Black women's history deals with Black women's sexual vulnerability and powerlessness as victims of rape and domestic violence," declares black feminist historian Darlene Clark Hine in the opening lines of her 1989 Signs article "Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance" (912). Thirty years after the publication of this article, black feminists are still grappling with the import and impact of Hine's conception of "the culture of dissemblance," which she describes as "a cult of secrecy" that twentieth-century black women developed "to protect the sanctity of inner aspects of their lives" in the face of institutionalized rape and the constant threat of it (915). "The culture of dissemblance" disrupts the aforementioned historical void and circumvents violent historical documentation by white public institutions, which are predicated at least in part on the denial of black female privacy. With this analytical framework, Hine demonstrates the importance of not only carefully reclaiming black women's narratives of sexual exploitation and violence, and ethically attending to those intentionally left hidden, but also of developing an array of analytical frameworks that "allow us to understand why Black women behave in certain ways and how they acquired agency" (920). This implicit call to honor black privacy while carefully locating black agency, to apprehend the gendered and sexual specificities of antiblack violence I would like to thank Darlene Clark Hine for her important and brilliant work and the contributors to this symposium for their labor and commitment to exemplifying the continued relevance of Hine's work. And a very special thanks goes to L. H. Stallings for various suggestions on the curation of this symposium.

Steeped in Shame: An Exploration of Family Sexual Socialization Among Black College Women

“…National statistics on rates of reported cases of sexual assault in the U.S. indicate that among racial/ethnic groups, Black girls and women are some of the least likely to report and among the most vulnerable to experience intimate partner violence and other sexual violence (Black Women’s Blueprint, 2019; Miller, 2019); sexual violence is a pressing social justice and public health issue within this population. Although participants’ family members may have communicated discretion messages of sexual restraint and clothing and body modesty in efforts to protect their daughters from sexual mistreatment, these messages ultimately reinforce rape culture and subvert participants’ bodily and sexual autonomy (Miller, 2019; Roach, 2020).…”