Everyone laughed when Antoine Dodson blurted out his famous line, “hide yo’ wives… they rapin’ everybody out there.” In some places, that statement is true. Black women and sexual violence have had a very long history, and yesterday, another critical chapter was added.
You’re lying if you weren’t laughing. A black male with a scarf on, uncut hair in a skimpy tank top talking trash to the camera and emphatically proclaiming outlandish statements.
“Hide yo wives, hide yo kids, and hide yo husbands cuz they rapin everybody out there!”
Its funny not just because of the way he said it, but it was comical because the statement seemed so unrealistic.
Come on now… they rapin’ everybody?
Then, I read the scathing story about 179 black women who were gang-raped in Congo. Suddenly, laughing about the prospect of rape isn’t so funny anymore. In some places they are raping everybody. In some places, you do have to hide your wives and your kids.
They are places like Darfur in Sudan, Congo, Rwanda and South Africa. These stories are buried in the back of the World News section in your favorite paper. They are reported to often little fanfare or reaction.
Maybe it’s because people don’t care. Or maybe because people are too exasperated to do anything.
I read the latest column in yesterday’s news. 200 to 400 rebels attack an unprotected, lawless and rural village. Then,“they began to systematically rape the population, most women were raped by two to six men at a time. The attackers often took the victims into the bush or into their homes, raping them “in front of their children and their families. If a car passed, they would hide.”
I can barely finish the column. I’m disgusted, I’m exasperated and I’m ashamed. It’s so easy to wish that men had more valor, but the truth is, where poverty is published, crime is often the author. In poor areas everywhere, where the law doesn’t mean so much, black women are being sexually abused in ways we don’t want to think about.
In America, we thank God for the ability to be protected. We often take for granted the rules that regulate the issues women face, which makes it easy for us to laugh at the seemingly outlandish statements in a YouTube video.
In other areas, its unfortunate that they can’t laugh at the same situation.
What you can do to help:
Get knowledge:
2. Surviving the Silence: Black Women’s Stories of Rape
3. African Women: A Modern History (Social Change in Global Perspective)
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