InfoGuides: CRIM 250 Domestic Violence (Whyte): African American/Black Communities

Finding Information

(from SART website) The term Black, or African American, includes a diverse group of individuals living in and recently arrived to the United States. The 2010 U.S. Census defines the Black or African American population as consisting of people who self-identify as Black, African American, or Negro. The census also offered the option of identifying Black or African American in combination of two or more races, such as Sub-Saharan African, Kenyan, Nigerian, Afro-Caribbean, Black Latino, Haitian, and Jamaican. This combination of categories showed that in 2010, the Black population consisted of 42,020,743 (13.6 percent) of the total 308,745,538 population of the United States. An interesting chapter about the mental health of Deaf African Americans and abuse can be found in Corbett. (2010). Mental health issues for African American Deaf people. In Irene W. Leigh (Ed.), Psychotherapy with Deaf Clients from Diverse Groups (2nd ed, pp. 161–182). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
Fact Sheet: Intimate Partner VIolence in the African American Community
Domestic Violence in the African American Community
Addressing Domestic Violence in the African American community
Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community
VAW.net

African American Books

African Americans and Criminal Justice Encyclopedia
Includes information on domestic violence. This comprehensive compilation of essays documents the historical and contemporary impact of the law and criminal justice system on people of African ancestry in the United States. * 120 A-Z entries on race and criminal justice and famous or infamous African American crime perpetrators or victims .
Battle Cries
Contrary to the stereotype of the "strong Black woman," African American women are more plagued by domestic violence than any other racial group in the United States. In fact, African American women experience intimate partner violence at a rate 35% higher than white women and about two and a half times more than women of other races and ethnicities.
Black Female Sexualities
Western culture has long regarded black female sexuality with a strange mix of fascination and condemnation, associating it with everything from desirability, hypersexuality, and liberation to vulgarity, recklessness, and disease.
The Color Purple
A novel which tells the story of a young African American girl named Celie Harris and shows the problems African American women faced during the early 20th century, including domestic violence, incest, pedophilia, poverty, racism, and sexism. Celie is transformed as she finds her self-worth through the help of two strong female companions.
Laying down My Burdens
This is a true, gritty and deeply moving depiction of the author's struggle with domestic and intimate partner violence and its threats to her self-esteem.
Memoir Deception of the Heart: A real look in to domestic violence
Gives women a perspective of what deception looks like through the eyes of the victim based on the author's experiences.
Push
Novel-companion DVD 'Precious'. Push recounts a young black street-girl's horrendous and redemptive journey through a Harlem inferno. For Precious Jones, 16 and pregnant with her father's child, miraculous hope appears and the world begins to open up for her when a courageous, determined teacher bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings and set them down in a diary.

African-American Videos

The Color Purple
Tells the story of a young African American girl named Celie Harris and shows the problems African American women faced during the early 20th century, including domestic violence, incest, pedophilia, poverty, racism, and sexism. Celie is transformed as she finds her self-worth through the help of two strong female companions. Companion book.
Precious
Companion to the novel 'Push'. Precious Jones, an inner-city high school girl, is illiterate, overweight, and pregnant...again. Naïve and abused, Precious responds to a glimmer of hope when a door is opened by an alternative-school teacher. She is faced with the choice to follow opportunity and test her own boundaries.