Black women and violence: the struggle for justice in Brazil and the United States

Abstract

This project investigates black women's experiences with violence in Brazil and the United States in a comparative perspective. Black people across the Americas experience violence as the result of racial bias. Yet these experiences are uneven. Gender, sexuality, class and national culture influence the way that racism functions. As a result, the violence that black people experience is diverse and uneven according to these factors. This project seeks to understand this complexity by comparing black women's experiences with violence in two nations that have traditionally been thought of as qualitatively different racial contexts. What are the similarities and differences between black women's experiences in these two national contexts and what do these divergences and convergences tell us about the plight of people of African descant in our hemisphere? We are primarily concerned with the socio-psychological effects of gendered racial violence. (AU)