Current Lived Realities of Sexual Violence

This graphic was created to help make the connections between sexual violence, racism, white supremacy, and the transatlantic slave trade. Sometimes people think “that was all in the past” or “just move on, get over it” when in fact, it is impossible to separate this history from the current lived realities of sexual violence. It’s all connected.

So, let’s break this down a bit.

First off, white supremacy is at the root of what we are talking about here. White supremacy is the racist belief that white people are superior to those of all other races and should therefore dominate them.

White supremacy perpetuates and maintains social, political, historical, and institutional domination by white people. Historically, white supremacy justified the transatlantic slave trade.

The transatlantic slave was the buying, selling and forced migration of African peoples, breaking up families and displacing individuals, for centuries. The unspoken reality is that the slave trade was not only a trade in bodies of people for labour. It was also a trade in the bodies of people for sexual exploitation.

The History of enslavement, along with racial segregation, and oppression of African Canadians has left a legacy of systemic racism in Nova Scotia.

Systemic racism is a series of barriers, including things like policies, processes and ideas that disadvantage people of colour. It is embedded in social norms and formal institutions like the police, criminal justice, education, and health systems.

Systemic racism leads to the conditions that impose poverty, lack of education, criminalization and incarceration; all of which make African Nova Scotians more vulnerable to sexual violence.

So remember how we mentioned the slave trade? Well you can guarantee that this would have been an extremely traumatic experience to endure. We know that trauma and its effects can be passed on from one generation to the next. This is especially the case when people see and hear about generations of sexual violence within and against members of their own community. The rape of Black women and the castration and sexual control of Black men during enslavement has led to intergenerational trauma and destructive racial stereotypes.

Women of African descent are often stereotyped as highly sexual, erotic and exotic. The persistence of this stereotype makes women of African descent more vulnerable to sexual violence and less likely to be believed when they report it. Girls and women of African descent are hypersexualized and objectified in the media and when cases of sexual violence are covered, the victims are blamed.

Stereotypes of men and boys of African descent are often negative, depicting them as aggressive, hypersexual, violent, and criminal. This creates a harmful misconception of Black men being less than human, and perpetrators of violence who are incapable of being sexually victimized.

There is a distinct lack of representation of LGBTQ individuals in the African Nova Scotian community. Not addressing transphobia and homophobia contributes to the invisibility of LGBTQ African Nova Scotians.

African Nova Scotian communities have been deliberately impoverished, denied housing, and denied equal employment opportunities. This leads to increased vulnerability to sexual violence. Economic instability causes people to “do what they have to do” to survive. For some, this can mean engaging in illegal and dangerous ways of making money in The Game.

It can be difficult for African Nova Scotians to speak out about issues in our community because of the very real threat of violence and injustice. Going to the police is not always safe. Systemic discrimination within the criminal justice system and a history of police violence makes the members of the African Nova Scotian community hesitant to report to police.

Black people are over-policed, under-protected, and disproportionately incarcerated. This means that Black people are increasingly put at risk in environments where sexual victimization occurs, and patterns of abuse are reproduced.  

Despite these harsh realities, African Nova Scotians are resilient in the face of ongoing systemic racism. Cultural pride is a major source of strength for African Nova Scotian communities. This includes things likes music, dance, clothing, and spirituality. It is also the way we meet and greet, the way we work and celebrate, what we eat and how we eat it, the way we relate to each other and the way we solve our differences. I mean, come on, we are still here! Despite centuries of racism and slavery, we are still here, and we are still strong!