This book provides a theoretical framework for empirically examining the impact of violence on marginalized peoples across the lifespan.  With anti-Black racism uniquely impacting Black women and girls who are sexually victimized, a unifying, empirically testable framework with a critical race perspective to examine Black women and girls' experiences of sexual violence is warranted. Dr. Jennifer M. Gómez created cultural betrayal trauma theory (CBTT) to expand the limiting assumption in the dominant theoretical and methodological literature on the impact of violence that traumas, such as rape, are solely interpersonal. In CBTT, Dr. Gómez builds on Black feminist scholarship, ethnic minority trauma psychology, and betrayal trauma theory to provide a theoretical framework for examining the impact of violence on marginalized peoples across the lifespan. The Cultural Betrayal of Black Women and Girls is the first book to use the CBTT research to contribute to academic and national discussions regarding anti-Black racism and sexual abuse. Using CBTT as a foundation, this book incorporates transdisciplinary scholarship on racism, intersectional oppression and intersectionality, sexual abuse against Black women and girls, cultural competency and critical consciousness in therapy, and healing in the community into a single resource for understanding and addressing oppression and sexual abuse on individual, institutional, and societal levels.

While much focus has been placed on Black Lives Matter activism in response to police and civilian murders of Black men and women, the contributors argue that Black activism in this era has addressed a broader range of issues in a wide array of settings, both on the street and inside institutions and communities. This Era of Black Activism includes chapters on this era of Black activism from 2000-2022. It describes how previous activism has influenced this generation, while showing innovations in political approaches, leadership and organizational formations, and the use of social and other media for movement purposes. Topics include the innovations of #BlackLives Matter as a movement; the Florida activist group Dream Defenders; policing and discrepancies in reporting on Ferguson; the role of citizen cameras in Black activism; social media for Black community coping and well-being; BIPOC Gay Power activism vs. Gay Pride; academic activism by Black and White professors; corporate responses to #BLM; #MeToo and healing within the Black community; Black health activism and the Covid pandemic; and bridging activism and policy for a new social contract. It also offers an additional bibliography on Black activism for environmental justice, athlete anti-racist activism, and the role of the Black Church in this era.