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The sexual assault of Terry Crews by Adam Venit raises all sorts of questions about the nature of sexual violence and our reluctance to see Black men as victims of sexual assault in the United States. Despite a history of Black men and boys being raped by White men and women, there is no effort to connect the centuries-long record of sexual violence against Black males to the sexual victimization of Black men and boys currently. This article analyzes the language, history, and stereotypes deployed in our understanding of Terry Crews's victimization, even those he uses to describe himself, to better situate and describe the vulnerability of Black men and boys to sexual violence in the United States. KEYWORDSBlack male studies; Black male victims of rape and sexual violence; Black male vulnerability; Terry Crews; racism On October 10, 2017, Terry Crews-a Black male actor and former professional athlete in the National Football League-announced on Twitter that he was a victim of sexual assault at the hands of well-known Hollywood executive Adam Venit: "My wife n I were at a Hollywood function last year in a high level Hollywood executive came over 2 me and groped my privates. This whole thing with Harvey Weinstein is giving me PTSD. Why? Because this kind of thing happened to ME" (Crews, 2017b).When Crews first announced himself as a survivor of sexual assault and a victim of sexual violence, many of the responses on Twitter blamed him for not defending himself from the assault and knocking the attacker out. Crews explained that Black men are not able to defend themselves from violence even when they are attacked by a weaker aggressor. If he did defend himself with violence from the groping of Venit, "'240 lbs. Black Man stomps out Hollywood Honcho' would [have] be[en] the headline the next day" (Crews, 2017a). In a June testimony before the U.S. Senate to expand the sexual assault Survivors' Bill of Rights Act, Crews explained that as a black man in America, you only have a few shots at success. You only have a few chances to make yourself a viable member of the community. I'm from Flint, Michigan. I have seen many, many young black men who were provoked into violence, and they were imprisoned or they were killed. And they're not here … . My wife, for years, prepared me. She said: "If you ever get goaded, if you ever get prodded, if you ever get anyone trying to push you into any situation, don't do it, don't be violent." (Kelly, 2018, paras. 4-5)

Background: Recent studies have shown that parental educational attainment is associated with a larger superior temporal cortical surface area associated with higher reading ability in children. Simultaneously, the marginalization-related diminished returns (MDRs) framework suggests that, due to structural racism and social stratification, returns of parental education are smaller for black and other racial/ethnic minority children compared to their white counterparts. Purpose: This study used a large national sample of 9–10-year-old American children to investigate associations between parental educational attainment, the right and left superior temporal cortical surface area, and reading ability across diverse racial/ethnic groups. Methods: This was a cross-sectional analysis that included 10,817 9–10-year-old children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Parental educational attainment was treated as a five-level categorical variable. Children’s right and left superior temporal cortical surface area and reading ability were continuous variables. Race/ethnicity was the moderator. To adjust for the nested nature of the ABCD data, mixed-effects regression models were used to test the associations between parental education, superior temporal cortical surface area, and reading ability overall and by race/ethnicity. Results: Overall, high parental educational attainment was associated with greater superior temporal cortical surface area and reading ability in children. In the pooled sample, we found statistically significant interactions between race/ethnicity and parental educational attainment on children’s right and left superior temporal cortical surface area, suggesting that high parental educational attainment has a smaller boosting effect on children’s superior temporal cortical surface area for black than white children. We also found a significant interaction between race and the left superior temporal surface area on reading ability, indicating weaker associations for Alaskan Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AIAN/NHPI) than white children. We also found interactions between race and parental educational attainment on reading ability, indicating more potent effects for black children than white children. Conclusion: While parental educational attainment may improve children’s superior temporal cortical surface area, promoting reading ability, this effect may be unequal across racial/ethnic groups. To minimize the racial/ethnic gap in children’s brain development and school achievement, we need to address societal barriers that diminish parental educational attainment’s marginal returns for middle-class minority families. Social and public policies need to go beyond equal access and address structural and societal barriers that hinder middle-class families of color and their children. Future research should test how racism, social stratification, segregation, and discrimination, which shape the daily lives of non-white individuals, take a toll on children’s brains and academic development.

Too often the idea of young Black boys as sexually aggressive or criminally assaultive displaces the idea that they can be victims at all. As such, Black boys are not theorized or researched as victims of sexual violations in current gender literatures. Instead they are almost exclusively represented as perpetrators of sexual violence, not victims of it. This study examines five snapshots of Black men who were victims of sexual violations as young boys. Our findings indicate that Black males are uniquely at risk for sexual impropriety and statutory rape, primarily via older women and teenage girl female-perpetrators (although risk also includes same-sex violations). This study, the first of its kind, argues that Black boys must be understood as a population at risk to be victims of sexual violations and require an earlier sex education emphasizing their sexual vulnerability.