Standing For Black Girls During Human Trafficking Awareness Month

January was Human Trafficking Awareness and Prevention Month. On Saturday, January 31st, the Women’s Leadership Project hosted the premier of my short film “Alpha Centauri,” which centers a young freethinking Black woman foster care protagonist’s experiences with trafficking as she plans for college, navigates family conflict, is affirmed by bonds of friendship and her love for science. In the midst of the ongoing furor over the Trump White House’s stonewalling on the Jeffrey Epstein files, the reality of Black women and girls’ disproportionate sex trafficking victimization is often lost. Nationwide, over 40% of trafficking victims are Black women and girls, yet the laser media focus on trafficked white women belies this inconvenient truth. As the National Black Women’s Justice Institute (NBWJI) notes, “Traffickers…believe that trafficking Black women would land them less jail time than trafficking white women.” This belief is reinforced by the criminalization of Black trafficking victims and the racist representation of missing Black children as runaways. It was recently borne out by the refusal of the jury in the P. Diddy criminal trial to convict the disgraced rap mogul on trafficking charges that primarily involved Black women victims. Apropos of this, it’s important to underscore that the disposability of Black female and Black queer trafficking victims is not only reinforced by white supremacy but by Black patriarchy, misogynoir and the hypersexualization of Black women and girls in our own communities.

Trafficking is often viewed within the lens of extremity. For mainstream America, it’s symbolized by predatory men snatching underage girls from the street and funneling them into multi-billion dollar global trafficking syndicates. It’s characterized by violence in low rent motels, branding victims with scuzzy tattoos and the export of pornography. These are some of the most insidious and traumatizing ways that trafficking plays out. Yet, trafficking also subtly thrives in everyday ordinary environments that promote and profit off of the perceived “sexual availability” of Black girls and girls of color. This myth is contrasted with the dominant culture’s stereotype about the purity and innocence of white girls and women. In this regime, white girls and women need protection because they are the implicit moral and beauty standard for “civilized” Western femininity. In this regard, simply moving through the world as a Black girl in neighborhoods, streets, schools and homes can be mentally and emotionally hazardous. The National Black Women’s Justice Institute found that Black girls are more likely to experience street harassment in their neighborhoods and sexual harassment in schools. According to Ujima, the National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community, one in four Black girls will experience some form of sexual abuse by age eighteen.

These conditions set the stage for the epidemic of trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation that Black women and girls are experiencing. When it comes to child trafficking and abuse, time and again, prevention education is left out of the equation. While resources for trafficking intervention are vital, culturally specific initiatives and curricula for preventing trafficking are few and far between. Simply put, prevention saves lives, empowers potential victims and develops potential allies. Black girls and queer youth face greater challenges and targeting that make them especially vulnerable to trafficking. These include the pervasiveness of misogynoirist social media and negative images that reinforce the idea that girls, queer and nonconforming youth need to be in a heterosexual relationship in order to be loved, affirmed and seen. Rampant adultification and hypersexualization of Black girls also make them more vulnerable to trafficking. In addition, the normalization of toxic masculinity (exemplified by violent lyrics and imagery) in some aspects of hip hop and rap culture created by Black and non-Black artists promotes an environment that makes it easier for Black girls to become trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation victims.

It’s also important to candidly acknowledge and educate youth about the role family and friends play in trafficking. As sex trafficking survivor advocate Dr. Stephany Powell notes, mothers can be complicit in selling their children for sex in exchange for drugs, friends can connect youth to traffickers and trafficking networks (in real time and on social media), and foster youth can be exposed to normalized exploitation and abuse in group homes and juvenile facilities. For many Black girls, being in foster care substantially increases the likelihood that they will be subjected to trafficking victimization.

Foster care victims are also more likely to become ensnared in the sexual abuse to prison pipeline, a process that captures the corrosive relationship between the sexual violence vulnerable youth experience and high rates of criminalization. According to the NBWJI, “Black girls are criminalized for their responses to abuse or trauma including running away, substance use, and truancy.” They are also penalized for defending themselves against their abusers. In addition, Black child trafficking victims, especially Black girls across sexuality, are at greater risk of being policed, criminalized and targeted for incarceration, despite being raped and sexually exploited for profit.

According to the Vera Institute, “Sixty percent of states have laws prohibiting the incarceration of minors who have been trafficked. However, studies show that youth impacted by exploitation have high rates of legal system contact…In California, nearly 40 percent of youth prosecuted as adults reported trafficking prior to their incarceration. A 2018 study of youth on probation in Los Angeles found that girls who had been identified as CSE had significantly more arrest referrals, entrances into juvenile hall, violation hearings, bench warrants issued, and petitions filed and sustained in juvenile court than their nonCSE peers…One study of youth engaged in survival sex in New York City found that 70 percent had been arrested at least once. In a 2023 national survivor survey, 22 percent of survivors reported having been in the juvenile criminal legal system, and 62 percent reported having had contact with law enforcement.”

Vera Institute research also bears out the urgent need for targeted Black feminist-womanist gender-based violence prevention and intervention for girls. As the organization notes, “A study examining a nationally representative sample of youth incarcerated on prostitution charges found that while nearly all surveyed youth (94 percent) had experienced at least one type of childhood victimization, girls had significantly higher rates than boys of nearly all forms of victimization, with almost two thirds having experienced sexual abuse and half having experienced rape.” In addition, “a 2016 study of youth ages 13–24 involved in the sex trade in six U.S. cities found that nearly half were LGBTQ+ and 70 percent were Black.” Black women are twice as likely to be incarcerated than white women.

The statistics are both heartbreaking and daunting. However, the Diddy trial, and the battle to bring convicted predator R. Kelly to justice, demonstrates that providers, educators and advocates should not shy away from teaching youth that they are entitled to bodily autonomy, boundaries and control, whether dealing with friends, family members and/or community members of all genders. Youth should be trained to become allies for their peers. In this regard, prevention involves being educated to identify and safely redirect risky behavior (that doesn’t pose an immediate threat to the peer or ally) through affirming, empathetic intervention. This may involve active listening, talking out problems with one’s peers, offering food and/or physical safe space, and knowing when to seek help from trusted adults. As one survivor has noted: “If we are truly serious about protecting children from abuse, rage cannot be where we stop. We must do the hard, uncomfortable work required to protect children by talking more openly about child sexual abuse and by bringing prevention to the forefront of the conversation.” Only then can youth be self-determining in the midst of the trauma and erasure of sexual violence.