When women were groped, fondled and assaulted in New York's Central Park by mostly young black and Puerto Rican males, many observers wanted to chalk it up to male misbehavior toward women. But it's wrong to deny there was a racial component to the melee. Far too many young black males today are taking out their frustrations with white society on women. They react to the denial of their manhood by adopting an exaggerated tough-guy role, a warped response to racism and deprivation, powerlessness and alienation. When black women refuse to be sexually submissive or are perceived as trying to control men, they can become targets of violence.
Black females are far more likely to be murdered by black males than white females by white males.
In the past, crimes committed by blacks against other blacks were often ignored or lightly punished. The implicit message was that black lives were expendable. Many studies have confirmed that the punishment blacks receive when the victim is white is far more severe than if the victim is black. This perceived devaluation of black lives by racism has encouraged disrespect for the law and has forced many blacks to internalize anger and displace aggression onto others, and often those victims are women. The spread of the drug trade during the 1980s made black youth gangs even bigger and more dangerous.