Battle Cries. Hillary Potter
historically and contemporarily situated place in society is strongly embraced affords a more comprehensive understanding of a group disproportionately implicated in offending and victimization. Ignoring distinctions in identity and experiences based on that identity serves only to perpetuate indifference toward Black women and their plight.
Black feminist criminology may also be critiqued as pathologiz-ing Black women. By focusing on Black women’s distinctive standpoint, it may be seen as viewing Black women’s victimization and criminality as something normal and endemic to their personality or genetic traits. Although there is a history within communities of color of not wanting to reveal the injurious behavior taking place between members of these communities—often for fear of upholding criminal stereotypes—it is imperative that more attention be given to the abuses inflicted on women of color. Exposing these concerns via a Black feminist criminology demonstrates that the instances of crime and violence in the Black community occur not because of a so-called acceptance of such behavior and illuminates the compelling effects of structural influences. In turn, this approach helps explain the prevalence of intimate partner abuse, how Black women experience such abuse, and the reactions by the criminal justice system and its representatives.
A third anticipated criticism of Black feminist criminology is that by examining Black women as a group, it assumes that all Black women have the same experiences. Although Black women in U.S. society indeed encounter similar circumstances, there are numerous gradations and variations in their lived experiences. As addressed earlier, both Black feminist theory and Black feminist criminology consider Black women from their collective and individual experiences simultaneously. Stories communicated by battered Black women reveal similarities that will aid efforts to make culturally competent services available to Black women. As with all battered women, the individual circumstances of Black women must always be considered in conjunction with the shared experiences of these women.
The specifying of a theory that seems to consider only Black females actually opens the field to considering gender, race, and class analyses of criminality, crime victimization, and observation of the criminal justice system. Black feminist criminology highlights the need to consider the intersectionality of individual identities in all crime-related concerns. Certain individuals in society are more privileged than others, and social structure influences culture, families, and the individual; thus, it stands to reason that individuals other than Black women and Black men are affected by their positions in society.
As established at the outset, there can be many variations on feminist criminology. There may be variations on Black feminist criminology, as well. Even so, this concept provides a solid starting point for placing Black women victims of intimate partner abuse at the center of analysis. As such, even if another Black feminist criminology theoretical proposition leads in a direction different from that presented here, at least Black women’s (and Black men’s) interlocking identities will be considered central, as opposed to tangential or not at all, in relative investigations. Although there exists the potential for disapproving reactions to a Black feminist criminology, such an approach to understanding abuse in Black women’s intimate relationships is more desirable than disadvantageous.
The Power of Narrative
Black feminist criminology places Black women at the focal point of consideration, as opposed to wedging them into theories developed based on the lives of men or White women that may not necessarily represent the experiences of Black women in the United States. Therefore, it was important that my study focus only on Black women, their lives, and the stories of the abuse perpetrated against them. To do this, I set out to conduct in-depth interviews with a diverse group of Black women.
Women who identified themselves as Black or African American, who were at least 18 years of age at the time of the interviews, and who had been or were at the time of the interviews involved in abusive intimate relationships were eligible to participate in this study. I did not restrict the study to heterosexual women and relationships; however, only heterosexual women abused by men replied to the solicitation. I also did not limit the participants to those who had been abused only by Black men. As a result, one woman’s only abusers were non-Black men, and an additional three women were in relationships with non-Black abusers in addition to their Black male abusers.
The majority of the women came to me by way of an advertisement of the study in a monthly Denver-based newspaper mainly geared toward a Black audience. Thirty-nine-year-old Zora captured the sentiment of many of the women regarding the placement of the advertisement in the community newspaper: “I was so happy to see an ad regarding African Americans and domestic violence. Just seeing the ad and knowing that that’s an issue and hoping that people were taking advantage of the resource. To be able to talk about it and to know that there are other people that are in the same situation or have been.”
Between May and November of 2003, I made contact with 95 women who fit the study criteria. While I would have been delighted to speak with each of these women, I was limited by time and funding (each woman received a monetary incentive upon completion of the interview, and a transcriber had to be employed to expedite the completion of the project). Further, theoretical saturation was attained before the fortieth interview; it was highly likely that the additional interviews would have revealed similarities among the women’s stories.
A detailed account of the study recruitment and the demographics of the women can be found in the Appendices, but a brief description is outlined here. Ultimately, 40 women were interviewed. The women ranged between the ages of 18 and 69; most were of the Christian faith, and they had a variety of educational backgrounds and levels of wealth. Eight of the women belonged to four mother-daughter sets (mothers and daughters were interviewed independent of each other). All 40 women had experienced at least one physically abusive relationship that also included verbal or mental abuse. At the time of the interviews, three women were in verbally or mentally abusive relationships that they thought had the potential to also become physical.
Among other things, feminist research expects the researcher to identify her or his position in the context of the subject matter.34 This enables the researcher to identify any personal values that may have an effect on the findings. Sandra Harding writes that many feminist investigators employ the phrase “reflexivity of social science” to describe this new relationship between the researcher and the participant.35 A particular characteristic of feminist research methods includes variations in the interviewing process. Feminist investigators do not believe that social distance needs to be maintained between the informant and the researcher. Feminist researchers often prefer semistructured or even nonstructured interviewing because it provides a medium for gathering more information from interviewees.36 In addition, informants’ questions are answered, and forming personal relationships with informants occurs and is sometimes expected. The entire interview environment is usually documented, including such factors as whether others were present, how long the interview lasted, and how the investigator established rapport with the informants.37 As for feminist ethnography and other qualitative research settings, Shulamit Reinharz suggests that the goals of such research involve documenting the lives of women, understanding the experiences of women from their points of view, and conceptualizing the women’s behaviors as expressions of contemporary social environment.38
Leon E. Pettiway makes the case that, in the quest to make criminology a real science, criminologists overemphasize the need to remain neutral in their research. Pettiway argues that this has resulted in criminologists who “fail to consider their own identity in their investigative enterprises.”39 While reflexivity is generally inherent—and maybe required—in qualitative research, Pettiway’s arguments rest on the need for reflexivity in all criminological pursuits. Reflexivity in social science research should involve both being reflexive and doing reflexivity.40 Specifically, the researcher must understand not only how her beliefs affect the research process but also how to consider how these beliefs affect the way in which the data are analyzed.
Early on in my gathering of the women’s narratives, I began to consider the relational aspects between the women as interviewees and myself as the interviewer. One of the first issues of contemplation was comments made by a few of the women upon my meeting them at the designated interview