{"id":72905,"date":"2022-07-30T13:32:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-30T17:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=72905"},"modified":"2022-08-08T14:17:14","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T18:17:14","slug":"rape-laws-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/rape-laws-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Racism in Rape Laws in America: An Echo of Slavery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What is the connection between racism and sexual violence? How does racism manifest in American rape laws?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The American legal system continues to perpetuate racism in various forms. For example, rape laws in America still echo the racist attitudes of the earlier period by giving black offenders harsher punishments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s a look at the racism hidden in rape laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-rape-laws-in-america\">Rape Laws in America<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For Black women, rape laws in America rarely result in justice due to stereotypes developed during slavery. A study conducted in Kansas City and Philadelphia found that prosecutors are 4.5 times more likely to file charges in rapes when the victims are white than Black. And, if the victim is Black, the accused are more likely to be acquitted or receive a light sentence if convicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: Recent research reiterates the authors\u2019 claim that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ojp.gov\/pdffiles1\/nij\/grants\/252689.pdf\">prosecutors are much more likely to file rape charges when the victim is white<\/a> than Black. And experts add that this fact both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.apa.org\/pi\/about\/newsletter\/2020\/02\/black-women-sexual-assault\">discourages Black women from reporting rape and puts them at a disproportionate risk of sexual assault<\/a>. They elaborate that 25% of Black girls are sexually assaulted before turning 18, and for every Black female that reports a rape, <em>at least<\/em> 15 go unreported. On top of this, Black women are the most likely of all races to be raped in their lifetime.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The authors argue that these injustices are due to persisting stereotypes from slave times that make Black women and girls out to be hypersexual, or \u201cJezebels.\u201d These stereotypes developed to justify and encourage the rape of Black women by their white enslavers\u2014the belief claimed that Black women and little girls were promiscuous and always consenting, and&nbsp; therefore couldn\u2019t be \u201craped.\u201d The stereotype was publicly endorsed by newspapers so that American enslavers would produce more slaves\u2014the children of these rapes became the property of their mothers\u2019 rapists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Endorsements of the Jezebel Stereotype<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>According to experts, there\u2019s another component of the Jezebel stereotype that encouraged white men to prey on Black women: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ferris.edu\/HTMLS\/news\/jimcrow\/jezebel\/index.htm\">White men mistakenly believed that the women weren\u2019t satisfied during sex with Black men and that they desired white men instead<\/a>. White men mistook this stereotype for consent, and therefore didn\u2019t consider forced sex with these women rape.<br><br>Further, the Jezebel stereotype was endorsed not only through newspapers but also by the institution of slavery itself. Enslavers \u201cencouraged\u201d young girls to have sex as practice to become \u201cbreeders.\u201d If they resisted, they were often either raped, beaten, or both. And when they complied, it confirmed what enslavers saw as their inherent promiscuity. So the ways that society treated Black women also endorsed the Jezebel stereotype\u2014they couldn\u2019t fight against their mistreatment for fear of violence, but because they didn\u2019t resist, the Jezebel stereotype was confirmed for white society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the connection between racism and sexual violence? How does racism manifest in American rape laws? The American legal system continues to perpetuate racism in various forms. For example, rape laws in America still echo the racist attitudes of the earlier period by giving black offenders harsher punishments. Here&#8217;s a look at the racism hidden in rape laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":41995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[688],"class_list":["post-72905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","tag-the-1619-project","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Racism in Rape Laws in America: An Echo of Slavery - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Rape laws in America still echo the racist attitudes of the earlier period by giving Black offenders harsher punishments. Learn more.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/rape-laws-in-america\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Racism in Rape Laws in America: An Echo of Slavery\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rape laws in America still echo the racist attitudes of the earlier period by giving Black offenders harsher punishments. 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