You Know These Things Just Happen

The world is not always a place of peace and plenty. Despite our technological advances, our intellectual prowess, and our thirst for justice and equality, the world can still be a pretty fucked up place. For the most part when bad things happen, we have a desire to distance ourselves from the traumatic experience in order to either process it or to suppress it. What is more distressing, however, is when someone else intervenes not to liberate us but to further silence us in our trauma. How often have you heard the phrases “you know these things just happen” or “it was just a misunderstanding” knowing full well that there was no misunderstanding or happenstance, but intentions deep and dark. But what happens, when the hand in the night full of dark intentions belongs to someone you know? Ntozake Shange’s seminal work for colored girl’s who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf explores this very notion and how it pertains to the rape of women of color.

The lady in red tells us:

a rapist is always to be a stranger
to be legitimate
someone you never saw
a man wit obvious problems¹

Or so we are thought. The truth however is quite different. According to surveys conducted by the Bureau of Justice, 38% of victims were raped by a friend or acquaintance, 28% by "an intimate" and 7% by another relative, and 26% were committed by a stranger to the victim. About four out of ten sexual assaults take place at the victim's own home. Though not an insignificant number, only ¼ of reported rape cases were perpetrated by a stranger. In the remaining 75% of reported cases the victim knew their attacker.²

75%.

SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT.

Let that number sit with you.

What is more staggering is that these numbers only reflect the number of reported cases of rape. In the United States alone, 60% of instances of rape go unreported. Out of those cases that are reported only 50.8% of them end in arrest and only 58% percent of those cases that make it to trial end in conviction. Nearly ⅓ of those individuals convicted of rape avoid facing any jail time. When you factor in under-reporting, the inherent difficulties of prosecution, and the number of individuals who avoid jail time you wind up with only 16% of the reported 40% of cases of rape ending with conviction and time served.

In another light, only 6% of all instances of rape actually with the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of the perpetrator.

Going back to Shange’s work, we are given a little insight into why so few cases make it to trial in the first place:

if you’ve been seen in public wit him
danced one dance
kissed him good-bye lightly

wit closed mouth

pressin charges will be as hard
as keepin yr legs closed
while five fools try to run a train on you³

For women (and men) who fall victim to sexual predators who wear the mask of friendship can often be as devastating an ordeal as the rape itself. It is a violation of both body and spirit, of trust and faith, that is hard to face. Many victims retreat or are forced to believe the lies of “if you know him / you must have wanted it” or “are you sure you didnt suggest” or the accusatory “hd you been drinking.” Comments and questions designed to induce shame.4
Shange tells us otherwise and reveals the sleight of hand that is taking place. Though her work was written in 1975, her words sadly still ring true. “...it turns out the nature of rape has changed/ we can now meet them in circles we frequent for companionship/ we see them at the coffeehouse/ wit someone else we know/ we cd even have em over for dinner/ & get raped in our own houses/ by invitation...”5
Fortunately, every story need not end in sorrow and grief. Though Shange reveals an ugly truth about our world she does not allow the darkness to go unchallenged. Instead she gifts us with a tale that builds a rainbow from the darkness for those who been dead so long, closed in silence so long, they don’t know the sound of their own voices, infinitely beautiful. We invite you to walk out of the darkness and to cross the rainbow and see what light exists on the other side.

Peace,
I.M.

Also, check me out at Colored People Theater aka CPT. 
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1. Ntozoke Shange, for colored girls who have contemplated suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. 1st Collier Books ed (New York, NY: Scribner Poetry, 1997) 17.
2. “The Offenders: Rape Isn’t A Masked Stranger,” RAINN, 31 May 2011 .

3. Ntozoke Shange, for colored girls who have contemplated suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. 1st Collier Books ed (New York, NY: Scribner Poetry, 1997) 18.

4. Ibid, 17.

5. Ibid, 19.