Battle Cries. Hillary Potter
of the informed consent form, the women stated their appreciation of the fact that I am a Black woman. They admitted to having assumed that I am a White woman because, in part, the advertisement for the study listed the University of Colorado at Boulder as the affiliation; this is a predominantly White university in a predominantly White town. One woman stated, “I thought you were some White person from Boulder trying to study us.” It was statements like this that led me to believe that the women likely felt less inhibited about disclosing their stories to me, particularly those reports that involved their perceptions of White people and the criminal justice system. Even though I had not experienced intimate partner abuse as they had (and I wholly recognized how this might affect my interpretation of the women’s stories), the women seemed to assume that as a Black woman I could understand their views of the world around them. This is supported by Patricia Hill Collins, who argues that “Black women intellectuals best contribute to a Black women’s group standpoint by using their experiences as situated knowers.”41 Accordingly, she concludes, “In terms of Black women’s relationships with one another, African-American women may find it easier than others to recognize connectedness as a primary way of knowing, simply because we have more opportunities to do so and must rely upon it more heavily than others.”42 In the process of telling their stories, a few of the older women were eager to offer me protective advice about ways to avoid finding myself in abusive relationships with men.
Collins discusses at length the place of Black women scholars in the theory, research, and activism process. She argues that the continued development of Black feminist thought is imperative to the discipline of social theory. This does not preclude those who are not Black women from participating in the advancement of Black feminist thought but instead places Black women’s intellectual and activist work on Black women at the forefront of theoretical hypothesizing and investigation.43 It is from this stance that examinations of the lives and experiences of Black women victims and offenders should be investigated. An analysis of approaching intimate partner abuse against Black women from this position may offer a more comprehensive appraisal of their experiences with and responses to their victimization. Considering the historical experiences of Black women in the United States, which have been couched in multiple forms of domination, the approach advanced here is based on a fresh viewpoint that regards how Black women’s lives may position them to encounter intimate partner abuse differently from women of other races and ethnicities (especially White women).
My arguments by no intention undervalue the important and noble work done by original feminist criminology and its adherents. It is the advent, subsistence, and practice of feminist criminology that makes the concept insisted on here obtainable because of feminist criminology’s position that, although women and girl victims and offenders have parallel life circumstances, there are variations among them that are based on cultural, racial, and other distinctions. Indeed, mainstream feminist theory and feminist criminology allow for a more suitable assessment of women and criminal victimization than traditional male-centered criminology, but Black feminist criminology necessarily provides for consideration of Black women’s multiple and interconnected identities and their position in U.S. society as a central element of any examination.
3 Dynamic Resistance “I’m a Strong Black Woman!”
Beginning in her formative years, Billie was faced with a multitude of circumstances that she had to regularly resist. These battles not only included the intimate partner abuse she endured during adulthood but involved events during childhood that included combating child abuse by her mother, sexual molestation by her brother, and teasing by other school children because of her low-income class status. As she aged, Billie had to deal with recurrent financial stress, the authority of the criminal justice system, employment discrimination because of her arrest record, her alcohol and cocaine abuse, and physical health problems. She summed up her life by stating, “I’ve had a rough life. Now I go to church. I’m trying to get it together.” During our time together, Billie regularly spoke in a manner that encompassed her entire life, her entire life struggles, and the strength that she and other Black women must possess in order to contend with these difficulties. The general consensus among the women in the study was demonstrated by Billie’s declaration: “Black women are strong. They go through everything. From the time I could remember, Black women have been going through hell. White women have been pampered.… I think White women, they’ve got it so easy and Black women don’t.”
The women I interviewed undoubtedly understood the gender disparities within society, in which all women are in a devalued position compared to that of men.1 They also overwhelmingly believed that they were at an even greater disadvantage than White women because of their race. Further, although understanding the place in which they, as Black women, are situated in the general social order and in relation to men in their immediate communities, the women consistently conveyed that they had a stronger conviction than White women in resisting the patriarchal hierarchy. The women’s observations of their life experiences typically intertwined their gender, race, and class locations. This supports the reality of Black women as individuals with intersecting identities. The women were asked to articulate how they believed they were different from other women and their circumstances different from the circumstances other women face. They compared themselves to battered and nonbattered women, typically using White women as their comparison base. Their self-depictions and descriptions of other Black women overwhelmingly included the use of the term “Strong Black Woman,” while White women and battered White women were often described as “weak.” In most cases, “Black woman” was synonymous with “strong woman.” The women were also acutely aware that in the view of other people one element of their identity might supersede another. For example, in their experiences, race often trumped gender in the views of non-Blacks.2 Employing a Black feminist criminology and interpretive approach to my study enabled me to genuinely listen to what the women were telling me and to develop a way of knowing how their lives as Black women affected the way they experienced all that comes with intimate partner abuse. Using these methods of Black feminist criminology and story telling led to the conceptual model of dynamic resistance. Dynamic resistance is the concept that links the varied and similar experiences and identities of battered Black women to provide improved understanding of their encounters with and reactions to the violent events in their lives and the existing support networks. Dynamic resistance will become even more evident as the reader progresses through the remainder of this book, where the model is clearly linked to the evaluations of the women’s formative life experiences (Chapter 4), encounters with battering and perceptions of the batterers (Chapter 5), rejection of victimization and physical efforts at resistance (Chapter 6), and resources used for departure from the abusive relationships (Chapter 7).
Perceptions of Other Battered Women
The women’s perspectives on other women and the ways some of them handled intimate partner abuse were based on several sources. First, general interaction with other women of color and White women served as a partial foundation for their opinions. This interaction was with women they encountered in daily associations within their communities. The extent of interaction with White individuals varied greatly among the women. They were raised in and lived in many types of communities across the United States and internationally, ranging from rural, mostly White towns to highly populated metropolitan neighborhoods that were predominantly Black and Latina/o. Yet none of the women were completely isolated from daily interactions with Whites. Another source for scrutinizing differences and similarities between Black women and White women was the media. Celebrated women in the news media and dramatic television shows were the typical sources. However, the women were aware that White women, as well as Black women, are often presented by the media in a stereotypical manner. Last, several of the women had extensive interaction with battered White women through their experiences with the criminal justice system and with social services agencies, including stays in battered women’s shelters, and from employment or voluntary work experiences in which they interacted