Abuse of Power Archives - WESurviveAbuse

The Lynching of Assault Victim Marie Scott: How Slavery’s Logic Still Shapes Our Lives

Tonya GJ Prince — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:34:08 +0000

There is no clean ending to something that was never fully confronted. Ending violence, abuse, and harm requires us to tell the truth without dilution.

Generational harm requires intentional repair, not passive hope.

Slavery did not just extract labor. It rewired how a nation decided who counted as human. That kind of damage does not expire on its own. It mutates. It adapts. It learns how to survive in new language, new laws, new systems.

First it was ownership. Then it became control.’

Lynching was not history. It was a warning that echoed forward.

After slavery, terror became a tool of enforcement. Lynching was not random violence. It was public spectacle. It sent a message without needing a courtroom. It told Black communities, clearly and brutally, that their lives could be taken without consequence. That fear was policy, even when it was not written down.

White Mob Lynches Marie Scott in Wagoner County, Oklahoma

Excerpt from EJI.org:

The Associated Press wire report and accounts published by Northern papers explained that the group of white men had ventured into the Black residential area to sexually assault Black women and attempted to rape Marie Scott. According to some of these accounts, Marie stabbed Pierce in self-defense; in others, Marie’s brother killed Pierce in an effort to defend her, and Marie was only arrested and lynched because her brother escaped.

Local press reports, on the other hand, did not say anything about why the white youth were in the Black neighborhood or what they did while there and simply claimed that Marie Scott stabbed Pierce unprovoked and in cold blood.

For generations of Black women, racial terror included the constant threat of sexual assault and a complete lack of legal protection.

The same communities that lynched and legally executed Black men for the scarcest allegations of sexual contact with white women regularly tolerated and excused white men’s inappropriate attacks against Black women and girls.

“Given this history, Marie Scott may have been among the many Black women targeted for sexual violence during this era by white men who knew that they would face no judgment or consequences for rampaging her community.

Whether she acted in her own defense or was protected by her brother, Marie Scott died at the hands of a mob, the victim of a society that devalued her life and body; deprived her of the chance to defend herself at trial; and denied her the right to be free from rape, terrorism, and racial violence.”

There is no expiration date on unaddressed harm.

Then Jim Crow stepped in to formalize what terror had already enforced. Segregation was not just about separation. It was about hierarchy. It was about making sure one group moved through the world with dignity, while another was forced to navigate humiliation as a daily condition of life.

Society has a responsibility to repair, not just acknowledge.

Redlining followed. No chains. No burning crosses. Just maps. Policies. Decisions made behind desks that quietly determined who could build wealth and who would be locked out of it. Neighborhoods were not just shaped. Futures were.

We have a responsibility to examine systems, not just individuals.

And then came mass incarceration. A system that does not need to say what it is doing out loud because the outcomes speak clearly enough. Entire communities over-policed, over-sentenced, and under-protected. Lives interrupted. Families fractured. Generations rerouted.

Policing without trust is control, not safety

Policing, in too many places, reflects this same pattern. Not as protection, but as pressure. Not as service, but as surveillance. Communities are told they are being kept safe while simultaneously being treated as a threat. That contradiction is not confusion. It is design.

Justice delayed across generations becomes injustice normalized

This is not a timeline with a finish line. It is a pattern.

Dehumanization is not always loud. Sometimes it looks like neglect. Sometimes it looks like indifference. Sometimes it hides behind policy that claims neutrality while producing predictable harm.

What started as a justification for slavery became a lens. And that lens still influences who is seen as dangerous, who is seen as disposable, and who is given the benefit of the doubt.

If you want to understand impact, do not just look at history. Look at outcomes.

Look at who is more likely to be stopped, searched, denied, underfunded, displaced, or disbelieved.

Look at how often pain is questioned instead of addressed.

Look at how systems respond differently depending on who is standing in front of them.

This is not accidental. It is inherited.

And inheritance, if left unchallenged, becomes identity.

Here is the truth many people try to soften: harm that is not repaired does not disappear. It compounds.

It shows up in health disparities. In wealth gaps. In education access. In housing instability. In the constant, quiet calculation of safety that some people must make every day.

Dehumanization is not just about what was done. It is about what continues to be allowed.

So the question is not whether slavery ended. The question is whether the logic that sustained it ever truly did. Without confrontation, dehumanization evolves. It does not retire.

Because healing does not come from pretending something is over. It comes from deciding, collectively and consistently, that it will not be allowed to continue.

@ashleytheebarroness I’m glad they said it. I am. But the ones that couldn’t even bring themselves to say it? …yeah. that’s doing something to me. #unitednations #crime #slavery #historytok #fyp ♬ original sound – Ashley

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Black Truth-Telling on Violence Was Never the Problem

Tonya GJ Prince — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 07:36:27 +0000

“I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this!”

Black people have been telling the truth about violence for a long time.

Not for attention.
Not for spectacle.
Not to be labeled.

But so that more people could live peaceful, joyful, violence-free lives.

That was the intention.
And still is.

The Record Was Never Hidden
Long before hashtags.
Long before public debates.
Long before people argued over what words to use—

the stories were already here.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl — a young girl naming sexual coercion by a man in power.

Roots — families torn apart, women exploited, power operating in the open.

Cane River — generations shaped by unequal power, quietly documented and traced through bloodlines.

The Color Purple — abuse inside the home, normalized and endured.

The Bluest Eye — a harmed child, and a community that could not protect her.

Corregidora — memory preserved when systems erased evidence.

Lena Baker Story

The Women of Brewster Place

The Josephine Baker Story

The Dorothy Dandridge Story

The Rosa Parks Story

A Raisin in the Sun

For Colored Girls — layered violence that many recognized immediately.

I May Destroy You — modern language for harm that has always existed.

Surviving R. Kelly — Survivors speaking for years before power was challenged.

Central Park Five

Selma

The Rosa Parks Story

Sinners

Get Out

Do the Right Thing

Candyman

The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Good Times..….

Foundational Black Feminist Works on Violence & Power

Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism
Connects slavery-era sexual exploitation to modern systems of harm against Black women.
Sisters in the Wilderness
Uses the story of Hagar to explore sexual exploitation, survival, and spiritual meaning.

Violence Against Black Women (Direct Focus)

Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation
Shows how systems criminalize Black women while failing to protect them from violence.
Compelled to Crime
Examines how abuse and coercion push women into criminalized situations.
Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
Documents state violence and lack of accountability.
At the Dark End of the Street
Shows how sexual violence against Black women shaped the Civil Rights Movement.

Structural & Systemic Analysis

Killing the Black Body
Examines control over Black women’s reproduction and bodily autonomy.
Medical Apartheid
Documents medical exploitation and experimentation on Black bodies.
Fearing the Black Body
Traces how anti-Blackness shapes standards, control, and harm.

How many songs and lyrics…….

Across all of these works, you see a consistent throughline:

Violence is not random
Power protects itself
Systems often fail—or punish—the harmed
Black women document anyway

And Then Came the Pushback

Not just new either.

When the truth is told, the response often sounds like this:

“They’re doing too much.”
“This is trauma porn.”
“They’re playing the race card.”
“That’s victim mentality.”
“This is just woke.”

Different words.
Same function.

To make the truth easier to ignore.

This Pattern Is Not Unique
This is where the understanding deepens.

Because this doesn’t just happen to Black storytellers.

This happens to victims of violence—everywhere.

They are questioned.
Their tone is policed.
Their experiences are minimized.
Their credibility is challenged.

Before protection ever arrives.

And Still—The Stories Were Told
Black people did not wait for approval.

They wrote it.
They filmed it.
They spoke it.
They passed it down.

So that someone, somewhere, could recognize:

This is not normal.
This is not acceptable.
This has a pattern.

The goal was to make violence visible—so it could be stopped.

And because those records exist,
we are not starting from zero.

We are starting from truth that was already given.

People talk about this daily online. Are you listening? Are you avoiding the issues? Are you avoiding the truth?

The question now is simple:

Will we all listen—
or will we keep renaming the truth until it feels easier to dismiss?

“I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this!” Haven’t you? Are you ready to listen now?

The post Black Truth-Telling on Violence Was Never the Problem appeared first on WESurviveAbuse.

How We Stack Burdens on Women and Girls: “Can We” Is Not the Same as “Should We”

Tonya GJ Prince — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:19:24 +0000

There is a question people ask often.

“Can we?”

Can we do this.
Can we allow that.
Can we push this boundary further.

It sounds reasonable.
It sounds neutral.

But it isn’t.

Because “can we” is about permission.
It’s about what is technically allowed.

And too often, it skips over something far more important.

The Question We Keep Avoiding

Not can we.

Should we.

Should we move forward with something
that increases risk for women and girls?

Should we normalize ideas
that make it harder for women to name harm clearly?

Should we keep expanding boundaries
without stopping to ask who absorbs the impact?

Because Someone Always Pays

Decisions are not abstract.

They land somewhere.

And more often than not,
they land on the bodies, safety, and lives of women and girls.

The girl who is told to ignore what feels wrong
The woman who is expected to “be understanding”
The one who is asked to carry discomfort quietly
so others don’t have to feel challenged

This is not new.

What’s new is how often it’s dressed up
as progress.

Ability Is Not Responsibility

Just because something can be done
does not mean it should be done.

Just because something is possible
does not mean it is safe.

And just because a line can be crossed
does not mean women and girls should be the ones
expected to live with what happens next.

A Grounded Standard

Before any change moves forward,
there is a question that deserves to be asked—clearly, without rushing past it:

Who benefits?
Who is placed at risk?
Who is expected to adjust, endure, or stay quiet?

If the answer continues to be women and girls,
then the conversation is not complete.

A Survivor-Centered Truth

Women and girls are not the testing ground
for ideas that have not been fully considered.

We are not the margin of error.
We are not the silent cost.

Affirmations

I am allowed to question what is being asked of me.

I do not accept harm simply because it has been normalized.

My safety is not negotiable.

I am not here to absorb the consequences of decisions I did not make.

The question was never just “can we.”

The question is—and has always been—
“who pays for it if we do?”

— WeSurviveAbuse.com | Survivor Affirmations | Tonya GJ Prince

Retired police chief says Layton officer was ‘over invasive’

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A Nurse Speaks: What They’re Not Telling Black Women About PrEP, Trust, and Risk

Tonya GJ Prince — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 08:09:07 +0000

“The pharmaceutical industry is profiting off a cycle of deceit,

selling us the cure for the recklessness they are quietly enabling.”…….

Honored to share another expert piece from The Way She Came on Substack…….

Some of us read this post over and over again!

Education. Information. Self-Preservation

What you are about to read comes from lived experience, clinical reality, and a level of honesty that is becoming harder to find in public spaces. It speaks to what many women—especially Black women—are quietly navigating, questioning, and carrying without enough clear, grounded information to support them.

The post on Substack comes from a nurse who has lived and worked through the height of the AIDS crisis and is now witnessing a new shift—one that many people are not talking about plainly.

This thought-warming piece breaks down what is happening at the intersection of modern HIV prevention, changing sexual behavior, and the real-life risks facing women—especially Black women.

It speaks to:

• how PrEP, while powerful, is being misunderstood and over-relied on
• how condom use is quietly declining
• how the message of “undetectable = untransmittable” is sometimes being used in ways that remove women’s ability to make informed choices
• how deception, silence, and entitlement continue to place women at risk
• and why Black women are still disproportionately impacted, often within relationships that are assumed to be safe

It does not deal in surface-level reassurance.
It deals in what is being seen, lived, and experienced in real time.

This is not about stigmatizing people. This is about health care.

Anytime Black women encounter health care we owe it to ourselves to ask more questions and make sure that we understand.

That we are very clear about the risks.

That we understand our responsibility.

The answers we are receiving to our questions are grounded in integrity and concern for our health, safety, and well-being.

Gratitude and appreciation to the Black Femicide Prevention Coalition for sharing this valuable information on Facebook.

The False Comfort of a Pill: A Nurse’s Plea to Black Women by The Way She Came

Read on Substack

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What “Just Say No” Taught Us About False Solutions

Tonya GJ Prince — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:56:07 +0000

There was a time when America believed a slogan could solve a crisis.

The Just Say No campaign told people:

Just say no to drugs.

Simple. Clear. Repeatable.

And it failed, failed, failed. Then wakes up in the morning and fails again.

People were substances to the point of self harm and wearing t-shirts that said “Just Say No” on the front.

Because the problem was never that simple

People were not using drugs because no one told them not to.

They were navigating:

pain
poverty
pressure
trauma
environment
lack of access to opportunities (intentionally placed obstacles)

A slogan could not touch any of that.

Because the campaign didn’t address:

why people turn to substances
how environment shapes behavior
what support systems are missing
how trauma and instability play a role

It did not ASK the people, their families, the communities, or healing and treatment providers on the frontlines …..enough questions.

And we are at risk of repeating that same mistake

Today, the conversation sounds different, but the pattern feels familiar:

“If we remove porn, women will be safer.”

It sounds decisive.
It feels like action.

But it is still a surface-level solution to a layered problem.

We Do Not Defend Porn

Let that be said clearly.

We see harm.
We see exploitation.
We see distortion.

But we are not going to pretend that removing content removes the mindset behind it. We have been here before.

If porn disappeared tomorrow,
women would not suddenly be safe and out of range of destruction.

Because the danger was never just the content.
The danger is the mindset carried into the world.

Because we have already seen this play out

“Just Say No” focused on desired outcomes.
while ignoring the conditions that produced it.

And when the conditions remained,
the behavior adapted.

The same risk exists here

If porn disappeared tomorrow, but nothing else changed—

entitlement to women’s bodies
expectation of access
disregard for “no”
lack of consequences for harm (especially if the judge believes he/she is looking at a “bright future”. As if the victim was not.)

—women would not suddenly become safe.

This is because the belief system would still be intact.

This is the part we cannot afford to skip

Safety is not created by removing one outlet.

It is created by confronting:

power
control
permission
accountability

Across homes.
Across institutions.
Across cultures.

Especially for the women most often overlooked

Because surface solutions rarely reach:

women who are poor or come from a background where poverty was reality
women with disabilities
women across the Black diaspora
women from many Asian cultures
Indigenous women and girls
women taught to endure quietly
elderly women and young women too
women whose cultures taught them to carry pain quietly
women whose “strength” has been used as an excuse to deny them care
girls sent from one home to be a “wife” to a far too old man in another.
girls held down and mutilated without anesthesia for the benefit of some man in the future.
girls sent to period huts because they are menstruating.

If safety only improves for some,
then it has not been built. Constructed. With a framework and everything.

It has been rationed.

What actually makes women safer

Not slogans.
Not avoidance.
Not reduction alone.

But transformation:

teaching that “no” is final
removing the expectation of access (for each and every male)
listening when women speak
respecting boundaries without punishment
enforcing consequences for harm

Across all communities.
Not just the visible ones.

The truth we already learned once

We’ve already tried solving deep problems with simple slogans.

It didn’t work then.

It will not work now.

The real issue is what some men (and women) believe they are entitled to

Access to women’s bodies
Control over women’s choices
Authority over women’s lives
The right to ignore “no”
The expectation that women should absorb harm and violence quietly

Porn can reflect these beliefs.
It can amplify them.

But it did not invent them.

“You don’t solve harm with a slogan.
You solve it by changing the conditions that allow it.

**Content warning (some descriptions of abuse that may be upsetting)

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There is a Difference Between: “I Want This and I Do Not Want This”

TGJP — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 02:46:00 +0000

updated from July 31 2016

Consensual sex and sexual violence are not the same.

They are not close.
They are not interchangeable.
They do not belong in the same sentence without care, context, and understanding.

Sexual violence is not casual knowledge.
It requires study.
It requires experience.
It requires deep, careful listening to Survivors and those who have spent years doing this work.

And yet, headlines told a very different story.

“Girl, 15, had sex with 25 boys in high school bathroom”
“Parents stunned after girl has sex with as many as 2 dozen boys”
“15-year-old girl caught having sex with 25 ‘willing’ boys”

Chile… now how you sound?

That question carries weight.

It comes from elders who don’t play about truth.
Translation::
You are out of order.
You are loud and wrong.
You are speaking without alignment, without care, without understanding.

And that is exactly what happened here.

What We Know — And What Should Have Been Obvious

1. The blame was placed on a child.

Every headline centered the girl, but in a negative light that she did not deserve.

Her behavior.
Her body.
Her choices.

Meanwhile, 25 boys were present.

But somehow, the weight of shame landed on her alone.

That is not reporting.
That is conditioning.

It teaches the public exactly who to blame—and who to excuse.

2. The facts were not settled.

Writers moved fast.

Too fast.

There was no way to confirm that every interaction was consensual at the time those headlines were published. Investigations involving minors, especially that many minors, take time.

Yes, people speak during crisis.

And we should listen.

But real understanding often comes later—

The girl did not have sexual contact with 25 boys.
Many were spectators.

That alone should have stopped the presses.

3. Experts were missing where they were needed most.

This is where the harm deepens.

Sexual violence is not a guessing game.
It is not something you “figure out” mid-article.

Where were the experts?

Where were the professionals trained to recognize coercion, group dynamics, exploitation, and trafficking indicators?

Because what looked like a “story”…

…was actually a crisis.

What Was Missed Entirely

The girl was a victim of human trafficking.

Let that sit.

While headlines were being written
while clicks were being gathered
while narratives were being shaped

A trafficked child was being framed as a participant.

Not a victim.
Not someone in danger.
Not someone in need of protection.

She did not need help….right? Unworthy?

A participant.

That is not just inaccurate. That is harmful. That is inhumane.

And Now She Has to Live With That Story

A girl. A person. A human being. She still has to walk into school.

People still remember.

Not her truth—
but the version of her that was broadcast.

No name was printed.
But reputations don’t need names when communities can fill in the blanks.

We Have Seen This Before

We have already watched what happens when media gets sexual violence wrong.

The Rolling Stone UVA article controversy should have taught every newsroom a lesson:

Slow down.
Verify.
Consult experts.
Protect the vulnerable.

And yet…Here we are again.

What Needs to Change

(I could use soft words here like “avoid” but y’all haven’t heard us yet. So how about “stop”? Just stop.

Photo by Jose Aragones/Unsplash

Stop defaulting to narratives that blame girls.
Stop reporting before facts are verified.
Stop treating sexual violence like common knowledge.
Start consulting real experts—every time.
Start recognizing signs of exploitation, not sensationalizing them.

Because this is bigger than one story.

This is about how society understands harm.

Final Truth

Just because adults are capable of sex
does not mean they understand sexual violence.

And when you don’t understand it—

you mislabel it
you mishandle it
and you harm the very people who need protection the most.

If a headline makes a child look like the problem…
pause.

And ask yourself, like the elders would:

When you accuse a child of assault, how do you come across to yourself?

Nothing that we are learning in “files” today should surprise us. We have been treating children this way for too long now.

Blues singer Lead Belly put a warning in a song about this very thing. People mock it and laugh about it now. Does that mean we are getting worse or better?

We must challenge ourselves whenever we catch a glimpse of ourselves, as we are the ones accusing child victims of violence and abuse of being the driving force behind their own destruction. They aren’t usually moving that fast, so it is us who must slow down and look more closely.

The post There is a Difference Between: “I Want This and I Do Not Want This” appeared first on WESurviveAbuse.

When Words and Actions Don’t Match: Why Women Must Trust What People Do, Not Just What They Say

Tonya GJ Prince — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 11:36:18 +0000

For years now, a message has echoed across schools, workplaces, and social media campaigns:

Be kind.
Be nicer.
Be more understanding.
Be more compassionate.

On the surface, kindness is a beautiful value. Many women already live by it. Women raise children, care for elders, nurture communities, volunteer, mediate conflicts, and hold families together.

Yet something strange happens when we look closely at who these campaigns are aimed at.

The message so often lands squarely on the shoulders of women and girls.

Women are told to soften their tone.
Women are told to be more patient.
Women are told to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Meanwhile, a simple reality sits quietly in the background:

Across nearly every country on earth, males commit the overwhelming majority of violent crimes — including homicide, assault, and sexual violence.
This is documented consistently in global crime statistics.

And yet the cultural pressure continues to fall on women to be nicer.

Not safer.
Not wiser.
Not more discerning.

Nicer.

At some point, women begin to notice the gap between what people say and what people actually do.

Words are easy.

Behavior tells the truth.

This is the wisdom behind the feeling so many women carry when they hear songs like “I Can’t Believe What You Say.”

Because every woman eventually learns the lesson hidden in that lyric:

Sometimes a person’s mouth tells one story, while their actions tell another.

And when that happens, actions deserve our attention.

Watching Actions Instead of Apologies

Women have long been trained to listen to explanations.

He didn’t mean it.
He’s just stressed.
He’s going through something.
He didn’t understand.

But explanations cannot erase patterns.

A pattern of disrespect.
A pattern of intimidation.
A pattern of manipulation.
A pattern of violence.

Kindness should never require women to ignore reality.

True kindness begins with truth.

A Different Kind of Kindness

Women are not the least compassionate people on earth. Quite the opposite.

But compassion without boundaries becomes permission.

And permission is exactly what harmful people rely on.

So perhaps the message women need is not “be kinder.”

Perhaps the message is:

Be wiser.
Be observant.
Be rooted in truth.

Kindness that protects life is sacred.

Kindness that silences women is something else entirely.

Affirmations Inspired by I Can’t Believe What You Say

Let these words settle where they need to.

• I trust what people do, not just what they say.

• I honor the wisdom that rises in my body when something feels wrong.

• My awareness is not cruelty. It is clarity.

• I no longer confuse politeness with safety.

• My discernment is a form of protection.

• Words without consistent action no longer persuade me.

• I am allowed to step back when behavior contradicts promises.

• I recognize patterns early and respond with wisdom.

• I am not responsible for maintaining comfort around harmful behavior.

• My kindness will never require me to abandon my safety.

• I listen carefully to actions, because actions reveal truth.

• My intuition has survived more than doubt ever will.

A Quiet Shift

Something powerful is happening in many women right now.

A quiet shift.

Women are beginning to observe more carefully.
Listen more closely.
Trust their instincts sooner.

Not because they have become less kind.

But because they have become more awake.

And awakening always begins the same way:

A woman stops arguing with reality.

She watches.

She notices.

And she finally believes what she sees.

Closing Reflection

When words and behavior disagree, the truth is never hiding in the sentence.

It is always visible in the pattern.

And women everywhere are learning to read those patterns with clear eyes.

Survivor Affirmations
WeSurviveAbuse.com

….I am closed to any prompting, pushing, or persuading around “being kind”.

I am a kind person who LOVES doing for others, but people prompting or trying to persuade me, is now officially a red flag.

Go sell it on a big male mountain somewhere. They could use more kindness campaigns over there.

The post When Words and Actions Don’t Match: Why Women Must Trust What People Do, Not Just What They Say appeared first on WESurviveAbuse.

Hello: 10 Issues Black Women Have Been Sounding the Alarm About for Decades

Tonya GJ Prince — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 23:33:12 +0000

Across social media and public conversations, there is a pattern many Black women recognize immediately.

When a crisis emerges somewhere in the world, voices appear demanding that Black women:

organize
educate
protest
comfort
mobilize

The tone is often urgent. Sometimes aggressive. Occasionally, laced with insults or accusations.

As if Black women caused the problem.
As if we built the systems being criticized.
As if we enslaved nations, colonized continents, or declared wars across the globe.

History tells a very different story.

Black women have spent generations trying to help societies move away from violence, injustice, and exploitation. Many have risked their lives doing so.

Yet even while that history exists, a strange contradiction continues.

Our labor is demanded, but our leadership is questioned.

We are invited into the work, but not always into the decision-making.

We are kept in the field, but rarely welcomed at the strategy table.

And while the world demands more labor, there are issues Black women have been raising for decades that remain quietly ignored.

Here are ten of them.

1. Violence Against Black Women
Black women have been sounding the alarm about violence in their communities for generations.

Not only violence from strangers.

But violence in homes, workplaces, and institutions.

The cover-up narrative is, “No one wants Black women, but that has ALWAYS been a lie used as a speed bump to stall searches, investigations, and finding the true culprits.”

Too often, these warnings were minimized, dismissed, or treated as private matters (ownership, our children, our servant) rather than public safety concerns.

2. The Disappearance of Black Women and Girls
For years families have searched for missing daughters, sisters, and mothers with little media attention.

Black women were speaking about this issue long before national campaigns finally began acknowledging it.

Even now, many cases receive limited coverage.

3. The Adultification of Black Girls
Black girls are often treated as older than they are.

They are expected to be tougher, more mature, and less innocent than other children.

This leads to harsher punishment in schools and less protection when harm occurs.

Black women have been pointing out this pattern for decades.

4. Medical Dismissal and Maternal Health
Black women frequently report that their pain is not taken seriously by medical professionals.

This reality has contributed to higher maternal mortality rates and delayed diagnoses.

Black women have been raising these concerns long before recent headlines acknowledged the crisis.

5. Economic Exploitation
Black women work at some of the highest rates of any demographic group in the United States.

Many support extended families while navigating wage gaps and limited access to capital.

Their labor sustains communities, yet their economic needs often receive less policy attention.

6. The Emotional Labor Expected of Black Women
Across workplaces, families, and movements, Black women are often expected to stabilize environments during crisis.

They are asked to mediate conflicts, mentor others, and repair damage.

Yet the emotional toll of that constant responsibility is rarely acknowledged.

7. The Silencing of Black Women Who Tell the Truth
When Black women speak directly about injustice, they often encounter labels meant to silence them.

Words like:

“angry”
“difficult”
“divisive”

Even, “hateful” and “bigoted” if you dare to speak truth.

These labels distract from the issues being raised and discourage others from listening.

8. The Myth of Endless Strength
Strength is frequently praised in Black women.

But that praise sometimes becomes an excuse to overlook their needs.

People celebrate resilience while ignoring exhaustion, grief, and vulnerability.

Strength without care becomes another form of burden.

9. The Expectation That Black Women Will Save Everyone
There is a strange assumption in many conversations that Black women must respond to every global crisis.

The expectation appears quickly:

Speak up.
Organize.
Educate others.
Fix this problem too.

But Black women did not design the systems responsible for many of these problems.

Yet they are repeatedly asked to clean them up.

And they still would not have voted for Harriet Tubman

10. The Refusal to Recognize Black Women’s Leadership
Perhaps the most frustrating reality is this:

Black women have offered solutions for generations.

They have written, organized, taught, and led movements that expanded democracy and human dignity.

Yet excuses continue to appear whenever leadership roles are discussed.

Black women are welcomed as workers.

But too often denied the authority to guide the direction of the work.

And they still would not have voted for Ida B. Wells

A Truth That Needs to Be Said
Black women have spent generations trying to move societies toward justice.

Calling for:

safer communities
stronger families
dignity for workers
protection for children
accountability for violence

Those are not small contributions.

Those are foundations for healthy societies.

And yet the pattern remains:

Demand the labor.
Question the leadership.

That contradiction deserves to be examined honestly.

A Different Question
Perhaps the conversation should begin somewhere else.

Instead of asking Black women to carry more responsibility for problems around the world, people might begin by asking:

What are Black women saying about the conditions where they live?

What concerns have they been raising for decades?

What wisdom has already been offered?

Because communities grow stronger when they listen to those who have been warning them the longest.

The post Hello: 10 Issues Black Women Have Been Sounding the Alarm About for Decades appeared first on WESurviveAbuse.

Does Naming Ourselves Hurt Anyone? No. Erasing Us Does.

Tonya GJ Prince — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:57:47 +0000

updated from November 18 2025

If the harm is sex-specific, the language has to be sex-specific.
Especially for Black women.
Especially in maternal health.

Black women have always understood the power of naming. (My own mother adorned me with a name that has deep symbolic and guiding light meaning. We talked about it often throughout my childhood. Wings for the treacherous journey.)

We insist on saying Black because history taught us that if we don’t name ourselves, the world will not only erase us, they will keep harming us. And repeat. And repeat. And then act as if they did not know it was wrong to harm Black people because you do not like us. Work the cycle.

But when it comes to our womanhood, many of us still hesitate.
We soften.
We widen the circle.
We include everyone—because we were taught that if we didn’t, we were being selfish.

We learned to dim our truth so others would not call us divisive.
We learned to carry everyone else’s struggle on our backs, even when our own bodies were breaking.

But maternal health is not the place to practice self-erasure.
Not when Black women are dying.
Not when our pregnancies, our pain, our losses, and our victories happen inside female bodies, shaped by biology and scarred by history.

Sex-based language is not exclusion.
It is not a lack of generosity.
It is not a failure of solidarity.

It is survival.

It is the clarity we need to protect Black women’s lives.

Why Black Women Must Speak Plainly About Our Womanhood

Our maternal crisis is not random.
It is not generic.
It is not “for everyone.”

It targets us because we are Black and because we are women.

Every single injustice—dismissed pain, misdiagnosis, preventable death, disrespect in labor, unnecessary surgeries—falls at the intersection of our race and our sex.

If we blur either part—Blackness or womanhood—we lose the truth.
And when the truth becomes blurred, the danger becomes invisible.

Black women cannot afford that.

We Think We Are Being Kind. But Often, We Are Being Conditioned…Again

Black women are trained from girlhood to be caretakers of the whole:

to make room

to soften demands

to never center ourselves

to never speak too specifically about our needs

to never inconvenience anyone

to never be “too Black,” “too female,” or “too particular”

We’ve been shaped to believe that advocating for ourselves is selfish.

But real self-care—the kind Audre Lorde spoke of—is not selfish.
It is self-preservation.
It is political warfare.
It is the courage to say:

I am a Black woman.
My life matters.
My womanhood matters.
My survival matters.
And I do not have to dilute my language to be worthy of care.

This Is Why Sex-Based Language Matters

Pregnancy, childbirth, miscarriage, postpartum crisis—these are not abstract human experiences.
They are biological events that happen to female bodies.

If we do not name the body, we cannot protect the body.

If we do not say “Black women,” the system defaults to being allegedly “colorblind”—which has never protected us.

If we do not say “maternal health,” the data disappears.

Clear language is not harm.
Clear language is the lifeline.

A Teaching Moment for Anyone Who Truly Wants to Stand With Us

Use the words “Black women.”

Use the words “maternal health.”

Use “girl child marriage“. Who is out here marrying little boys? Boys are being assaulted and harmed and WE are disgusted enough to write and speak about it on the internet that is forever and in person too. BUT who is marrying them, entrapping them, impregnating them, jacking their innocence? Name the harm. Name the harmer.

Use the words “female human bodies” “girl” and “women” when you mean pregnancy. Even when they gasp and call you hateful. The hate is what is happening to women. The hate is the fact that too often grown men are impregnating girls. But all the reasons that we can’t say true words center men’s feelings.

Don’t replace our reality with vagueness. Refuse.

Don’t make our crisis unsearchable or un-trackable.

Don’t make our womanhood disappear to be polite.

If you want to help us, name us.

We are not concepts.
We are not footnotes.
We are not categories inside categories.

We are Black women.
And the world must finally learn to care for us as Black women. That’s a beautiful thing. Not something to hide or dilute. Not something unsayable.

Black women are a divine creation.

A Rallying Cry for Our Own Souls

This is the self-care Audre Lorde meant:

The moment when a Black woman finally says,
“I deserve to speak plainly about what happens to my body.”

The moment we stop performing softness for others.
The moment we choose clarity over comfort.
The moment we choose survival over silence.

Naming ourselves is not selfish.
It is sacred.

It is protective.

It is how we make sure every Black mother comes home with her baby.

We name us clearly so we can protect us fully.

*** People can name themselves whatever they choose (see how we love), but what we cannot afford to do is allow others to un-name Black women…and then DEMAND and REQUIRE that we do the same.

The post Does Naming Ourselves Hurt Anyone? No. Erasing Us Does. appeared first on WESurviveAbuse.

You See Our Blackness, But Not Our Bruises

Tonya GJ Prince — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:48 +0000

updated from June 8 2025

We are not just Black.
We are not just women….or girls
We are Black women and Black girls
and we need care, health, and safety.

You don’t get to claim you care about justice
if disabled children, silenced girls, and war-torn mothers
don’t count because their healing would cost you comfort.

Or a male you have taken a liking to.

You don’t get to use our magic,
our music,
our memes,
our voices—
but ignore our cries when the harm comes. AND assist us in trying to prevent harm.

Some people call themselves allies.
But their “support” vanishes when we name male violence.

🕯️ For the Silenced Ones:

For the Black woman or girl who told her story and lost her friends.
For the disabled girl who was taught not to fight back or speak up.
For the woman in Sudan, Haiti, Congo,—who buried her child and still had to cook for others the next day.
For the girl in the group home who wasn’t believed.
For the woman in the church who dared to say, “My husband hurt me,” and was told to “pray harder.”

We see you.
We believe you.
We speak for you if you are unable, even when others refuse to.

⚠️ If You Only See Our Value in What We Do for You…

You do not love us.
You do not see us.
You are not safe.

Love that refuses to protect is not love.
Love that refuses to listen is not love.
Love that demands we keep serving while wounded—is not love. It’s exploitation.

🔥 Call to Action:

Stop asking Black women and Black girls to carry everything and everyone—including our abusers.
Start building systems where safety doesn’t require us to be silent.
Start believing that WE deserve to rest, rage, and rise.

We will not beg to be seen anymore.
We will not water down the truth to keep your comfort.

We are done being mirrors for everyone else’s greatness—
while being denied the right to our own healing.

Our silence ends here.

Share if you feel safe and ready—your voice might be the lifeline someone else needs.
And if you do share, remember to cite the messenger. Words carry legacy.

[rosaschildren.com] | [wesurviveabuse.com] | [survivoraffirmations.com]

The post You See Our Blackness, But Not Our Bruises appeared first on WESurviveAbuse.