CULTURAL BARRIERS
Cultural Barriers in the Black Community Regarding Sex Trafficking
The Alliance of Leadership & Innovation For Victims of Exploitation (ALIVE) Mission is dedicated to ending sex trafficking in the Black community by leveraging awareness and prevention through innovative solution-focused events.
According to Rights4Girls, a D.C. based human rights organization, sex trade survivors are disproportionately women of color and child sex trafficking victims are disproportionately girls of color.
A two-year study (2008-2010) issued by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 94% sex trafficking victims were female. Of that 94%, 40% were Black.
As recently as 2014 the FBI reports 52% of prostitution arrests made under the age of 18 are Black girls.
In 2010 DePaul University published “From Victims to Victimizers” (Raphael, Myers-Powell) depicted the Black experience of Prostitution as a family business “The majority of our sample (60%) came from homes in which prostitution was the family business. Over half (53%) of those with family members involved in prostitution said their mothers were prostituting and/or pimping. Others involved were uncles, sisters, and cousins. Some of these family members prostituted the participants at young ages, often against their will.”
This heartbreaking truth and classification of Black females as both victim and offender, and entire generations interdependent on the sex trade, breathing life into what became ‘Pimp Culture’, is the underlying reason our Vision is to behold a Black Community free from sex trafficking and exploitation.
This realization will only be attained by also addressing the driving force behind the business model that fuels the sex trade, the “Buyer.” The profile of the buyer as shown in most research is predominately white men, married or in a relationship, with children, educated and employed.
The Movement to end sex trafficking begins with all of us. ALIVE will work toward this goal based on Three Pillars:
First Pillar
To respond to the impact and ongoing harm of exploitation, address cultural barriers and collaborate to heal a hurting community.
By hosting and/or collaborating in large and small-scale events, ALIVE educates communities of color, and society at large, about the urban experience in the sex trade.
Second Pillar
ALIVE takes a critical look and addresses obstacles that historically have impacted sex trafficking in the Black community and works with national partners, state, and federal legislators to bring change.
Third Pillar
ALIVE works to ensure victims and survivors receive trauma informed, culturally appropriate victim-centered service referrals through systemic collaboration.
“CULTURAL BARRIERS”
Cultural Barriers in the Black Community Regarding Sex Trafficking
Historical Trauma
Miseducation
In more recent years events like the crack epidemic, American Welfare system, red lining and mass incarceration of Black males, but not limited to, all played a factor in the continuation of the cultural breakdown of the Black community and family unit. Pimping and Hoeing as it was so often called, became a way out of poverty in many urban Black American communities.