Beyond Paper Promises: Reclaiming Our Safety From The Crisis Of Black Femicide

Black women are dying at the hands of people who are supposed to love them and keep them safe. I know this isn’t breaking news. Years of research has warned us about the patterns of intimate partner and familial violence that stalk us. It feels urgent to name this in our current moment of collective and devastating grief. The statistics carry an unrelenting weight: Black women are three times more likely than white women to be victims of intimate partner homicide.

This is a surge in violence that advocates call “Black femicide,” a term coined by activist Rosa Page to describe a silent public health crisis. It’s a nuanced form of violence facilitated by structural neglect and the legacies of racism that leave Black women at increased risk. In cases where the relationship could be determined, research shows that nearly 90% of Black women murdered by men knew their killers.

What’s happening across the country reflects the same devastating patterns. It shows us a reality where “protection” is usually just a promise on a piece of paper that shows up long after it’s needed. We’re seeing these women erased in the very headlines that are supposed to tell their stories. They’re turned into footnotes in their own tragedies while the system that failed them looks the other way.

In Houston, the search for 23-year-old Ashanti Allen ended in a tragedy that still feels personal for me. Ashanti was eight months pregnant with a son she’d already named Jackson when she was found at Chimney Rock Park—just blocks from my front door. Authorities arrested Kevin Faux, the father of her unborn child, and charged him with murder.

The failure in Ashanti’s case is mechanical. Faux was free because of a “sweetheart” deal finalized only weeks before her death. The state had reduced a felony assault charge against him to a misdemeanor. They let him walk while the ink on the documents was still fresh. For Black women, the gap between “protection on paper” and actually staying alive is an abyss.

Just a few hours away in Shreveport, Louisiana, this same systemic indifference reached a level of devastation that defies words. On April 19, Shamar Elkins entered multiple homes and carried out a massacre that claimed the lives of eight children—seven of them his own. We speak the names of Jayla Elkins (3), Shayla Elkins (5), Kayla Pugh (6), Khedarrion Snow (6), Braylon Snow (5), Layla Pugh (7), Markaydon Pugh (10), and Sariahh Snow (11) so they aren’t reduced to statistics. This violence broke out as Elkins and his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh, fought about the court date for the legal separation she’d filed. Officials believe that the argument started the murder spree, coming just hours before Elkins was scheduled to face those very documents in court.

Both Shaneiqua Pugh and Christina Snow survived the physical attack and, as of the most recent reports, remain hospitalized in critical condition. Like Ashanti, Shaneiqua had looked to the law to create a buffer between herself and the danger. That morning was supposed to be her day in court—a moment of official separation and, hopefully, the start of some kind of peace. She woke up to a nightmare instead.

The Black femicide epidemic doesn’t discriminate by status. In Annandale, Virginia, Dr. Cerina Fairfax, a pillar of her community and a devoted mother, was killed by her husband in an apparent murder-suicide. Cerina had done everything “right.” She was navigating a legal divorce and following every court-mandated safety step. Her husband had recently been served papers to move out.

Experts remind us that professional success might bring a case into the media spotlight, but status doesn’t take away the risk. Wealth and education aren’t shields against a system that refuses to prioritize our safety.

The legal system is often sold to us as the safest solution for a woman in danger. For Black women, this supposed solution often feels like a trap. Recent data shows that gun violence against Black women and girls has surged, with a 49% increase in gun deaths between 2019 and 2023.

Seeking an order of protection often involves hurdles that make our experiences illegible to the court. Enforcement lacks urgency. Firearms are frequently not removed from abusive partners. The police are often “historians of trauma”—arriving only to catalog wreckage after the damage is done. For many, the carceral state is a machine of dual arrest and “failure-to-protect” prosecutions. Survivors end up behind bars or lose their children to a system that penalizes them for the violence they endured. We simply can’t rely on this system to keep us safe.

Abolitionists argue that true safety won’t come from the state. It’ll come from building a community-led infrastructure that makes police and prisons obsolete. This approach, known as Transformative Justice, centers on accountability and the self-determination of survivors.

Moving toward community governance means putting our resources into things that actually hold us up:

• Community Response Teams: Skilled neighbors trained to de-escalate crisis without lethal force.
• Safe House Networks: Homes within the community where women can find immediate sanctuary.
• Radical Reciprocity: Deepening community ties so a woman feels safe asking for help long before a crisis peaks.

The lives of Ashanti Allen, Cerina Fairfax, and those babies in Shreveport are mirrors reflecting the failure of protection that only exists on a page. We can’t wait for the state to develop a conscience it has never possessed, which means we must be the response teams, the safe houses, and the trust that holds a life together when it begins to fall apart.

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