Empowering Black Boys to Challenge Rape Culture

"In my senior year of college, some like-minded men and I went on a tour of the Southeast United States during our spring break. We visited several institutions in order to teach audiences how men can help sexual assault survivors who disclose victimization to them - a message in service of a broader mission to reduce the troubling rates of sexual violence on our campus and elsewhere. Our first stop was a university in the Atlanta area where we met with some of the school's faculty and staff"--
The role of men is critical when it comes to preventing sexual assault.Gordon Braxton was in his second year of college before anybody bothered to speak to him about sexual violence, despite the fact that he already knew friends and family members that had survived a sexual assault. Unfortunately, this is a common experience as many young men and boys, especially Blackboys, do not have an opportunity to discuss their views on sexual violence and what role they might play in preventing it. Empowering Black Boys to Challenge Rape Culture supports the training of a rising generation by providing commentary from an experienced educator, an overview of existingresearch and preventative techniques, and insight into young men's perspectives on violence. The result is a powerful new perspective on violence prevention--the first to focus on Black boys and to be written by a Black male author.The most critical lesson that boys need to learn is that they have an essential role to play in preventing sexual violence. So many of them accept this violence as beyond their control when they could be valuable agents of change. More and more parents and mentors of boys are coming to addresssexual violence as a cultural problem rather than the activities of isolated social deviants. Empowering Black Boys to Challenge Rape Culture adds an important voice to our discussions about sexual violence education and prevention, showing that a rising generation of boys will play a vital part inrealizing a non-violent future.