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COPOC
Although women of color and women from other marginalized communities have been involved in the domestic violence movement since its beginning, services have largely been designed for and run by mainstream communities. The battered women's movement has made some progress in changing attitudes about domestic violence, but the benefits of this progress have been experienced to a greater degree by younger, dominant culture victims with children. For example, printed materials and videos are largely produced in English. Domestic violence victims and their children and advocates whose first language is not English, do not have equal access to current information about seeking services, dynamics of domestic violence, current good practices and protocols.
Government, law enforcement and child welfare involvement have historically had devastating effects on ethnic/racial minority families. Domestic violence victims reasonably do not trust that court intervention would improve safety for them and their families. Similarly, many efforts to improve the legal and/or social service systems' response to victims have done little to assist women of color. In addition, ethnic and racial minorities are greatly under-represented in leadership roles in violence against women issues nationally, statewide, and locally.
Leadership, providing services and receiving services are inextricably linked. Meaningful protocols for law enforcement, the criminal justice system, health systems and other systems cannot begin to be drafted until ethnic and racial minorities are no longer under-represented in leadership roles. A valid criticism directed at the traditional approach of domestic violence service providers, coalitions and advocacy organizations is that we continuously ask individuals from under-represented communities to join, but do little to change the cultures of our organizations to allow them full enjoyment of the privileges of being part of an established system.
Involvement of communities of color themselves and their leadership is required in order for members of under-served communities to define strategies that will effectively reduce violence against women, promote victim safety, and hold perpetrators accountable in their communities.