Racial Justice

Race is a social construct that has created the systems and structures in our society, putting whites at the center. Violence is the means by which those system and structures have been reinforced by dehumanizing, silencing, and oppressing human beings. White settlers, slaveholders, and modern-day mass incarceration, all demonstrate violent victimization at the hands of racist systems and people.

Racism is deeply connected to sexual and domestic violence. People of color experience disproportionate rates of violence, the criminal legal system disproportionately punishes, and mass incarcerates people of color, and the movement to end sexual and domestic violence has replicated oppression, power imbalances, and racism within our organizations. White leaders of our movement intertwined sexual and domestic violence services and the criminal legal system believing the solution was recognition of the criminality of such offenses. As a result, we have a system where victims won’t report to the police as they are afraid of blame, reprisal, or negative consequences to themselves or their families, as well as an ever-expanding prison population that is disproportionately people of color. We have a deep responsibility to rectify our past mistakes, and not repeat them by ignoring the voices of people of color in favor of the dominant narrative of a middle-class white woman. Racial justice work is critical to achieve our mission of ending sexual and domestic violence.

We are committed to collaborating with communities of color to change the narrative of the future, centering people who have historically been marginalized.