Someone They Loved: Domestic Violence Isn’t Easing Up For Black Women

by Jennifer Porter Gore

The data is both grim and disturbing: Black women are being slain at rates nearly triple those of white women. The killers, data shows, are usually men with faces familiar to the victims — typically, husbands or romantic partners, armed with guns.

Those are the top lines from a new Violence Policy Center report on intimate partner violence released last week, timed to coincide with Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Despite representing around 14% of the U.S. female population, “Black women have the highest rate of homicide victimization by males in our nation and are almost always killed by someone they know,” Kristen Rand, government affairs director for the Violence Policy Center, said in a prepared statement.

“This is an ongoing crisis that demands immediate