If your vision of justice requires Black women to accept more danger, you have not finished thinking about justice. When Black women ask to be protec
If your vision of justice requires Black women to accept more danger, you have not finished thinking about justice.
When Black women ask to be protected, we are not asking the community to abandon its principles. We are asking why our lives have not been treated as one of them.
There comes a point when Black leadership must be willing to ask a difficult question: What does our vision of justice actually offer Black women if our health, safety, dignity, and well-being remain negotiable?
Black women have spent generations organizing, protecting, teaching, advocating, raising families, sustaining institutions, and standing beside people whose humanity was being questioned. We have carried enormous responsibilities within our communities, often while navigating dangers that deserved far more attention than they received.
We have stood up for people who were being mistreated. We have challenged discrimination, fought for access to opportunities, and defended the rights of people who were being excluded. Much of this work was done while Black women were confronting violence, exploitation, and neglect in our own lives.
And now, after all of that, women are still being approached with expectations that we should make additional sacrifices involving our own safety.
We are asked to understand. To “accommodate.” To “sacrifice.” To “think of other people.” To “reconsider our boundaries.” To trust assurances that do not always come with meaningful safeguards. A community that knows how to defend its dignity should also know how to defend the dignity of its women.
A Black woman’s refusal to accept unnecessary risk is not a failure of compassion. It is an exercise of good judgment.
At some point, Black leadership must understand that asking women to accept additional risks is not the same as building a more just community. Black women are not the emergency fund for everybody else’s liberation.
Black Women Are Already Facing Serious Threats to Our Safety
Black women should not have to arrive wounded before our warnings are taken seriously.
We cannot discuss what Black women should be willing to sacrifice without acknowledging what we are already facing.
The statistics surrounding violence against Black women should trouble anyone who claims to care about the health and future of our communities.
- Black women face disproportionately high homicide rates. In 2023, the homicide rate for Black females was approximately 8 deaths per 100,000, compared with 1.7 for White females. That is nearly five times the rate. These are not abstract figures. They represent women whose lives ended violently, families left grieving, and communities living with the consequences.
- Black women experience deadly violence across many kinds of social contact. According to the Violence Policy Center, 733 Black females were murdered by males in single-victim, single-offender incidents in 2023. In cases where the relationship was identified, approximately nine in ten victims knew the man who killed them. But knowing someone does not necessarily mean having a close or intimate relationship. A man may be a neighbor, coworker, casual acquaintance, or someone encountered during everyday life. Women do not have to be romantically involved with men to be endangered by them.
- Gun violence is taking Black women’s lives. In the Violence Policy Center’s analysis of 2023 cases involving Black females murdered by males, approximately 74.7% of victims were killed with firearms when the weapon was identified. This is a serious public safety concern that deserves sustained attention, including prevention, intervention, and accountability.
- Sexual violence remains a serious threat. A CDC survey published in 2011 estimated that 21.2% of Black women had experienced rape during their lifetime. The same survey found that 38.2% had experienced other forms of sexual violence. These historical estimates reflect the scale of harm that Black women have been navigating, often while being expected to continue functioning as though nothing happened.
- Black women’s health is also endangered by serious disparities in medical care and outcomes. In 2024, the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 44.8 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with 14.2 for White women. Black women experienced maternal mortality at more
You cannot build a movement on Black women’s courage and then call us divisive when we ask to be protected.
Black women have given enough of our lives, our labor, our health, and our peace to causes that somehow keep finding reasons to ask us for more.
We are not an endless supply of sacrifice. We are not here to absorb everybody else’s risks, accommodate everybody else’s demands, or prove our commitment to justice by accepting conditions that compromise our own safety.
And we are certainly not going to pretend that our concerns are unreasonable simply because someone finds them inconvenient.
Black leadership needs to understand something. You cannot keep calling Black women the backbone of the community while refusing to protect the women holding it together.
We have earned the right to be heard, although our humanity should have been enough in the first place. We have every right to expect leadership that takes our warnings seriously, respects our boundaries, and considers our well-being before asking us to make another sacrifice.
If your vision of justice requires Black women to be less safe, then your vision of justice needs more work.
We are not asking for permission to prioritize our lives. We are telling you that we already do. And it is long past time for Black leadership to catch up. Leadership is revealed by whose safety you protect when protecting them becomes inconvenient.
Affirmations
My safety is not a bargaining chip. I will not place my health, dignity, or well-being on the negotiating table to satisfy someone else’s vision of progress.
I do not owe anyone another sacrifice. I have the right to decide what risks I will accept. My humanity does not come with an obligation to make myself vulnerable.
I refuse to inherit an endless assignment to endure. I honor the Black women who came before me by claiming more safety, more freedom, and more peace, not by accepting more suffering.
I am not available for compulsory sacrifice. My body, my peace, my privacy, and my safety are not resources that leadership can promise to someone else.
I will not confuse being needed with being valued. If an institution depends on my labor but disregards my well-being, I have every right to question its commitment to me.
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Black Women’s Safety Is Not Optional: What the Statistics Tell Us
These statistics tell a troubling story about the violence, abuse, and preventable dangers Black women face in America. Behind every percentage are women whose lives, health, families, and futures deserve protection.
– Black women face disproportionately high rates of homicide. In 2023, the homicide rate for Black females was approximately 8 deaths per 100,000, compared with 1.7 for White females. That means Black females were killed at nearly five times the rate of White females. These numbers raise serious questions about violence prevention and whether sufficient resources are reaching the women most at risk. Source: CDC, National Violent Death Reporting System, 2023.
– Black women face deadly violence from men across many kinds of social contact. According to the Violence Policy Center, 733 Black females were murdered by males in single-victim, single-offender incidents in 2023. Among cases where the relationship was identified, approximately nine in ten victims knew the man who killed them. But knowing someone can mean many things. A perpetrator may be a husband, former partner, neighbor, coworker, casual acquaintance, or someone encountered in everyday life. Women do not have to be romantically involved with a man, live with him, or have any meaningful personal connection to him to be harmed. The responsibility for violence belongs to the person committing it, regardless of how the victim encountered him. Source: Violence Policy Center, 2023 data.
– Firearms play a devastating role in violence against Black women. In 2023, approximately 74.7% of Black females murdered by males were killed with firearms in cases where the weapon was identified. In 2011, that figure was approximately 51%. The growing share of firearm deaths deserves attention in conversations about domestic violence, threats, stalking, and women’s ability to escape dangerous situations. Source: Violence Policy Center.
– Intimate partner violence remains a deadly threat to women. A CDC analysis of 2022 homicides found that approximately 50.8% of female victims whose relationship to the suspected killer was known were killed by a current or former intimate partner. This is a statistic for women across racial groups, not Black women specifically. It reminds us that women’s safety cannot be separated from what happens inside homes and relationships. Source: CDC, National Violent Death Reporting System.
– Sexual violence has affected a substantial proportion of Black women. A CDC survey published in 2011 estimated that 21.2% of Black women had experienced rape during their lifetime. The same survey found that 38.2% had experienced other forms of sexual violence. These are historical estimates, but they demonstrate the scale of harm that must be considered when communities discuss women’s boundaries, trauma, and access to safe services. Source: CDC, National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey.
– Black women’s safety is also a serious concern in healthcare. In 2024, the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 44.8 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with 14.2 for White women. Black women were approximately 3.2 times as likely to die from maternal causes. A community’s concern for women’s well-being must extend into hospitals, maternity wards, medical decision-making, and access to quality healthcare. Source: CDC, National Center for Health Statistics, 2024.
– Violence against women is not confined to public spaces. A study examining homicides of adult women from 2018 through 2022 found that 92.5% of victims whose suspected killer’s sex was identified were killed by males. The study covered women across racial and ethnic groups. This is important when discussing the need for effective safeguarding, early intervention, and services designed around women’s experiences of violence. Source: Peer-reviewed homicide research, 2018–2022 data.
What Black Leadership Must Confront
These statistics describe different forms of danger, but they point toward a common responsibility. Black women need more than public expressions of admiration, appreciation, and solidarity. They need violence prevention, effective healthcare, responsive institutions, properly supported shelters, and meaningful participation in decisions affecting their safety.
We cannot continue discussing the strength, resilience, and expectation of nurturing from Black women without also discussing what women have been required to survive. Black women should not have to demonstrate how much danger we can endure before our safety becomes a community priority.
Solidarity does not require Black women to become the sacrifice that makes everybody else’s progress possible.
Reliable sources to preserve
Organization | What to use it for |
|---|---|
Sexual assault, stalking, intimate partner violence | |
Homicide, firearms, circumstances of violent deaths | |
Black women murdered by men, weapons, victim-offender relationships | |
Reported and unreported violent victimization | |
Maternal deaths and racial disparities |