ARE YOU AWARE?
I recently had the distinct pleasure
to speak with Kalimah Johnson,
Founder of SASHA Center, and have
a very candid conversation about
what is happening in society with
our ‘rape culture’, sexual assualt and
how it impacts the African American
Community.
Rape culture is a concept that links
rape and sexual violence to the
culture of a society and in which
prevalent attitudes and practices
normalize, excuse, tolerate, and
even condone rape.
AWS: Are we living in a rape
culture?
Kalimah: We live in a violent culture,
slavery was based on violence,
people believe problems can be
solved through force and violence.
In the African American community
rape is rarely discussed openly,
rarely addressed openly and rarely
are perpetrators punished.
Rape survivors are invisible and even
when you consider how rape kits
were handled in the city of Detroit
for so long, it sends a message that
victims of rape are not important.
Society has much work to do about
violence in general but even more
work in the area of rape.
AWS: What is SASHA Center?
Kalimah: SASHA Center stands for
Sexual Assault Services for Holistic
Healing and Awareness. We are
an African American not for profit
organization primarily serving the
African American community around
issues of rape and sexual assault.
We serve survivors who are women,
men and children 16 years of age
and older, our populations can
also be single, divorced, married,
from various religious backgrounds
or atheist, all races, and all sexual
orientations/gender identities or
expressions.
We are not a crisis agency, a
24-hour hotline, nor do we engage
in individual counseling or court
accompaniment. There are other
competent agencies in our city that
are already doing that.
We see ourselves as the alternative,
as the place where we solely
concentrate on providing groups
services, which most often slip by the
wayside of the other organizations
because they have so many other
tasks at hand.
specifically. ANYONE of ANY race
can participate in our activities and
support group services. They will
learn more about what dynamics
are actually involved in the African
American community that makes
dealing with, healing from and
processing rape in our culture,
which IS very different.
At SASHA Center we talk about the
impact of slavery on our lives today
and how this history perpetuates
our silence now. African Americans
are not talking about rape, there is
a stigma in our community around
sexual assault and SASHA Center is
here to try to address the stigma,
myths and disenfranchisement
of sexual assault survivors in our
community.
AWS: How does SASHA Center differ
from other facilities that serve the
survivor community?
Traditional rape agencies have not
been able to address the specific
needs of the African American
community and SASHA Center
has now created a safe space for
black people to be who they are,
in their own language, within the
understandings of their own history
and culture to tackle this issue.
Kalimah: We concentrate on issues
that impact African Americans
We have come to believe that
African Americans respond better
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