from Los Angeles Times

For African American rape victims, a culture of silence
But as the phenomenon is finally addressed, women's voices emerge.
July 20, 2004 Gayle Pollard-Terry, Times Staff Writer

There's an old saying in the African American community: Black women raise their daughters and love their sons. A legacy of the atrocities of slavery, it signifies a communal protectiveness of black men, from the coddling of toddling boys to a reluctance to report rape and incest.

It's not like a get-out-of-jail-free card. It's born of a wariness of authority, especially white authority, learned from those stories about how your light-skinned sister got those gray eyes and your dark-skinned cousin got that keen nose, from those photographs of white lynch mobs and the beaten body of Emmett Till, a black teenager killed because of a wolf whistle.

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jul/20/entertainment/et-pollard20