Ricki Mizuno/Daily Nexus

On Monday, January 21, some of Eric Frimpong’s supporters came to the downtown march that honored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Last Monday, we arrived at the Unity March to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and were surprised by a group carrying signs and distributing information in support of Eric Frimpong, a UCSB student recently convicted of rape. As advocates for ending all forms of injustice and violence, we were deeply saddened by the group’s decision to use the MLK march as a forum for their views, despite having no connection to the event’s organizers. This choice was inconsistent with the march’s message of unity, and the reality that work for racial and gender equality must go hand in hand. Their banners visually took over the march, giving the impression that it was a rally for Frimpong as opposed to a community event dedicated to the memory and as-yet unrealized dream of Dr. King. Rather than honor Dr. King’s legacy by raising awareness about the very real problems of racial disparities in the criminal justice system and media, the “fact sheet” distributed by the protesters blamed the victim and perpetuated dangerous myths about sexual violence.

Dr. King told us, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” When grappling with issues of sexual violence, we must address the way racism influences our criminal justice system and media coverage. Do we, for example, question if stereotypes contribute to the frequent high profile given to cases involving a perpetrator who is a man of color without similar exposure given to cases involving white perpetrators? We should bust myths about “violent black men” with the truth that there is no significant difference in levels of sexual violence occurring across racial and ethnic communities, and that 90 percent of rapes occur between people of the same race. Scapegoating communities of color for our society’s epidemic of sexual violence is a grave injustice.

We must also be willing to challenge the sexism at work in these systems when, for example, the courts and media focus on the drinking or sexual activity of women reporting rape, although the same behavior is considered normal for young men. We should bust sexist myths about women “crying rape” with the reality that false reporting of sexual assaults is very rare, no higher than for any other felony crime (two to four percent). The impact of these myths is severe: Rape is the most underreported violent crime in the nation, with 84 percent of rape survivors never reporting to the police and many never seeking support because they fear being blamed or disbelieved. Blaming the survivors of violent crimes while excusing the perpetrators is also gravely unjust.

We can understand the distress of Frimpong’s supporters. Rape is a traumatic event for the loved ones of the survivor and the perpetrator. It is extraordinarily painful to learn that someone we love, trust, or admire may have committed a brutal act of violence. However, perpetrators of sexual violence are sometimes our trusted friends, family members, revered celebrities, and respected community leaders. It is natural to want to support our friends and important that we investigate injustice where we perceive it, but neither case gives us permission to engage in victim-blaming attacks that contribute to a culture that further silences rape survivors and excuses perpetrators. To quote Dr. King again, “The means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.”

The theme of Monday’s event, “Forty Years Later, Are We Living the Dream?” urges us to ask whether equality has truly been achieved — and evidence is all around us that this is not the case. We acknowledge that the criminal justice system continues to punish men of color more often and more severely than white men, and we wish to see this injustice corrected. We refuse, however, to justify the pursuit of this goal at the expense of survivors of sexual assault, who are often demeaned, silenced, and discredited in our society. This is not a conflict of race versus gender; justice for one does not preclude justice for the other. To seize the MLK rally and use it as a platform to challenge the credibility of a sexual assault survivor who was courageous enough to come forward is a misappropriation of the event and of the spirit of Dr. King’s legacy.

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