According to the U.S. Department of Justice, one in five Black women are survivors of rape. And one Detroit sistah and her organization is nationally renowned for reframing how Black women experience sexual violence.
When Lifetime aired the first night of “Surviving R. Kelly,” the Sexual Assault Services for Holistic Healing and Awareness (SASHA) Model: Black Women’s Triangulation of Rape helped explain the intersectionalities of anti-Black-woman bigotry, policies and funding, and the oppression caused by U.S. chattel slavery that was on display during the docuseries—and that image went viral.
The founder of the Detroit-based organization, Kalimah Johnson, created the model and developed it with a team of Black and non-Black cis and trans female facilitators, and sex workers developed the pyramid-shaped infographic as a way to show the barriers Black women face after they’ve been sexually violated. dream hampton, one of the docuseries’ executive producers, invited Johnson to her Detroit home for the premiere. hampton asked Johnson to tweet it, and then hampton retweeted it. The model was retweeted 8,000 times.
When the Michigan Chronicle spoke with Johnson during a recent phone interview, she explained the complexity in teaching it.
“The Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES), the police training program in Michigan, hired me last year to train their trainers. In order for me to teach about the Black Women’s Triangulation Model, I had to unpack anti-Blackness, Black feminism, patriarchy, white supremacy and racist language. We had to unpack all of that before I could teach about the model.”
When asked if SASHA has had any reports regarding the Detroit Police Department and sexual harassment, be it from the officers themselves or if they experience bias from police when the reported harassment from non-officers, Johnson said, “We’ve never heard anyone say that they’ve experienced sexual harassment by a police officer. That’s because, at our center, we do not ask people who are assaulting them.”
The reason for that is a culturally specific one. “Black women don’t necessarily want to tell you who harmed them. So, we don’t ask. Even if they do tell us, we do not record it anywhere. That’s because Black women have been treated so unjustly so much that the more information we ask for, the less likely they are to use our services.”
Johnson said that the reason for that is what Dr. Jennifer Gómez calls the cultural betrayal trauma theory (CBTT). This theory plays out in the intraracial community scripts that Black women get about not turning another Black man into the prison system and that Black women are “superwomen” and can take and tolerate all trauma.
“It’s rooted in slavery,” Johnson explained. “During Reconstruction, Black families, particularly Black women, decided that no one was going to be able to control who was in their family and who was going to be sold up the river. So, [the family structure and survival] depended on them not telling. The edict became ‘you can’t tell’ because the person who caused you this harm may also end up dead.”
The other reason for Black women’s reluctance to tell who the perpetrators are is Black communities are overpoliced, which begins the distrust between law enforcement departments and Black women.
Johnson was a social worker in the Detroit Police Department’s Sexual Assault Unit for 10 years, from 1995 to 2005. What she learned is that “people were treated differently based on how they presented.” And it wasn’t just the police department, Johnson stated.
“It was the hospital, the clinic, the emergency room. It was everyone treating Black women differently.”
What she noticed during her tenure at the police department was, when a sexual assault happened and all those who experienced it went to Detroit Receiving Hospital’s University Health Center, when the victim was a Black woman, whether she was rich or poor, there was rarely a sense of urgency to take care of her.
“They would page me when I was doing my shift, but say things like, ‘oh, if you have a lunch, finish it up. Get down here when you can. She’ll be here.’ And the person they would say that about would always be a Black woman.”
When there was a sense of urgency, Johnson observed, invariably the victim was white or did not appear to be Black, regardless of her socioeconomic standing. If the page or the call expressed urgency and the victim was Black, “she was connected to a powerful Black man in the city.”
“She knew the mayor, or she was married to a pastor, or she was one of the officers’ daughters. And it happened enough for me to say something about it.”
And it happened collectively, Johnson stated. “I don’t even think people realized they were doing that.”
Not only did the SASHA founder notice the disparity in treatment, she also noticed colorism. She stated that, when she worked at the police department’s domestic violence unit, she heard comments like, “I’m not going to take pictures of [the victim’s] scars because she’s too dark.”
However, Johnson said, according to a study by Dr. Becky Campbell from Michigan State University that looked at police reports, in the 90s and 2000s some officers in the Detroit Police Department did write things like, “this heffa is lying,” “there’s a huge difference between a ‘real rape’ and a trick that just wants her money,” and other things in the reports. And those things were written about Black women.”
What it comes down to are the systemic notions, Johnson explained, “that Black women’s bodies are not as valued, Black women are not believed and Black women are thought to be able to handle trauma better than others. It’s all these myths and stereotypes about Black women.”
Police departments, be they in Detroit or elsewhere, participate in that system because too often they operate under the white supremacist idea of “us vs. them” instead of the Black cultural understanding of “we and ours,” the SASHA founder stated. Because of that, they can miss opportunities to help Black women due to victim-blaming based on those stereotypes instead of approaching them with respect during a traumatic time.
The SASHA founder is currently getting her Ph.D. in English literature. Her topic is why she started SASHA and how humor is a coping response to deal with trauma but that Black women are not allowed to have that laughter. Sistahs are allowed to be angry, stoic or smile in the face of it all.
The reason why Johnson is working to engage Black women in talking about sexual assault and the issues Black women face regarding it is “we Black women don’t realize that we’re not only doing the work, but we are the work. We are in the process of healing.”
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