The District Chronicles

Issue date: 2/6/07 Section: Cover

Activists in the growing movement to support battered African-American women agree on what's needed to stem domestic violence: more services that are culturally informed and integrated into victims' communities.

''Color blindness is not what you need if you're trying to serve diverse communities,'' says Oliver Williams, executive director of the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African-American Community at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. ''The trend is toward an increase in community-based, faith-based and grassroots services.''

While the battered women's movement has long strived to serve all women, few projects can identify specific programs designed to reach out to diverse communities. That can be a barrier to safety for Black women, who tend to reach out for help through informal networks in their communities, such as a church, rather than consulting a shelter or hotline, according to experts.

African-American women face a higher risk for experiencing domestic violence than other women, according to the most recent data from the Justice Department. In fact, they are more than twice as likely to die at the hands of a spouse or a boyfriend. They are also at greater risk of more severe violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the Bureau of Justice Statistics in Washington, D.C.

''When you're talking about African-American women, you're talking about everything bad about family violence, and then some,'' says Tonya Lovelace, executive director of the Women of Color Network, a project of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence based in Harrisburg, Pa. ''The way that communities of color experience violence is affected by our history, and by other issues.'' Some behavior can be grouped by race, but differences can be deceiving, Williams said.

''Black women are more likely to leave than other women, but they are also more likely to return,'' he said. ''A lot of the reasons may speak more to poverty and a lack of resources, because a woman may just not have a different place to go.''

Organizations such as Atlanta's Black Church and Domestic Violence Institute, Williams' institute, and the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence's Women of Color Network are all engaged in training domestic violence groups and community service agencies in each others' work.

Much of the funding comes through the federal Violence Against Women Act, and much of the activity is coordinated and supported by the Violence Against Women Office at the U.S. Department of Justice. National groups such as the National Network to End Domestic Violence in Washington, D.C., and the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence coordinate and facilitate the work.

Continued...

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