Arrested Justice

Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation

Beth E. Richie

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780814708224
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

Black women in marginalized communities are uniquely at risk of battering, rape, sexual harassment, stalking and incest. Through the compelling stories of Black women who have been most affected by racism, persistent poverty, class inequality, limited access to support resources or institutions, Beth E. Richie shows that the threat of violence to Black women has never been more serious, demonstrating how conservative legal, social, political and economic policies have impacted activism in the U.S.-based movement to end violence against women. Richie argues that Black women face particular peril because of the ways that race and culture have not figured centrally enough in the analysis of the causes and consequences of gender violence. As a result, the extent of physical, sexual and other forms of violence in the lives of Black women, the various forms it takes, and the contexts within which it occurs are minimized—at best—and frequently ignored. Arrested Justice brings issues of sexuality, class, age, and criminalization into focus right alongside of questions of public policy and gender violence, resulting in a compelling critique, a passionate re-framing of stories, and a call to action for change.

1
Introduction

The year 2010 marked several important anniversaries in my work as a Black feminist scholar and anti-violence activist. More than 25 years earlier, I was one of a group of women of color living in New York City who organized one of the country’s first community-based anti-violence programs for women of color. We were working in Harlem, a predominantly Black and Latino community in New York whose renowned history of cultural and political activism led us—perhaps naively—to expect that our community would be open to our feminist analysis of, and responses to, gender-specific problems concerning the community’s health and well-being. We were surprised to find ourselves struggling with the community leadership who, at the time, resisted our attempts to intervene in what we considered problematic politics around issues of gender and sexuality.

That same year, I attended a conference sponsored by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There, I learned about the dynamic radical feminist activists who were building a grassroots movement in response to the problem of violence against women. Their analysis of gender inequality was powerful; it resonated deeply with the political work that we were doing in Harlem, except that their emerging feminist analysis did not adequately incorporate an understanding of race and class inequality. I was reassured that there was a Woman of Color Institute at the conference where a more intersectional analysis of the problem prevailed—a perspective that was more consistent with our own experiences. I was immediately drawn to nationwide efforts by women of color to challenge white-dominated groups to relinquish their hold on the growing resource base and resultant power, and to challenge patriarchal assumptions in communities of color and the growing body of Black feminist literature that was informing my work. It was an exciting time to be a Black community activist coming into feminist consciousness, and the burgeoning anti-violence movement served as a stimulating environment for my feminist anti-racist praxis.

Our young, energetic, feminist group of women of color had very high expectations for both the anti-violence movement and our communities. Our analysis around race, class, gender, and sexuality was solidly embedded in our everyday activism, which was informed by the stories of women among us who were beaten, raped, stalked, kidnapped, harassed, humiliated, and degraded by individuals as well as by state-operated systems of domination. We were as spontaneous, and naively optimistic, as we were strategic. We were passionate about our work and profoundly determined to find ways that communities of color and anti-violence programs could join forces to end the systematic abuse of women of color. We thought social and political conditions were ripe for building autonomous Black and Latina feminist organizations, and we expected that people we considered “natural” social justice allies would meet our efforts with enthusiasm. Instead, we found ourselves in a constant struggle with the more mainstream groups around us. The white feminist anti-violence movement was becoming more entrenched in an overly simplistic analysis that argued that gender inequality was the main factor that motivated violence against women—almost to the exclusion of other factors. At the same time, the leadership in male-dominated organizations in communities of color actively rejected the notion that gender inequality had much of an impact on women of color and that feminist analyses had much to contribute to racial justice work.¹

These political contradictions and dichotomous analytical positions have profoundly shaped my work as a Black feminist activist working against gender violence for the past 25 years. Despite some important intellectual and political progress in advancing a more coherent analysis of the relationship between white supremacy, class exploitation, and gender inequality, I continue to feel a strong tension in political and cultural spaces where theories of race, class, and gender oppression clash, in particular in the U.S.-based anti-violence movement.² The tension has escalated for me in the past ten years as a new political dynamic has emerged in this country—the buildup of America’s prison nation.

The notion of a prison nation reflects the ideological and public policy shifts that have led to the increased criminalization of disenfranchised communities of color, more aggressive law enforcement strategies for norm-violating behavior, and an undermining of civil and human rights of marginalized groups. A prison nation refers to those dimensions of civil society that use the power of law, public policy, and institutional practices in strategic ways to advance hegemonic values and to overpower efforts by individuals and groups that challenge the status quo. The political apparatus that goes into building a prison nation includes (1) practices that increasingly punish or disadvantage norm violations (adolescent pregnancy); (2) institutional regulations designed to intimidate people without power into conforming with dominant cultural expectations (welfare reform); (3) legislation that deliberately narrows opportunities for cultural expansion (English-only laws); (4) and ideological schemes that build consensus around conservative values (the primacy of heterosexual nuclear families). A prison nation depends on the ability of leaders to create fear (of terrorism or health-care reform); to identify scapegoats (like immigrants or feminists); and to reclassify people as enemies of a stable society (such as prisoners, activists, hip-hop artists). Most intellectual and political responses to this buildup look at how these developments disadvantage men, particularly Black men.³

Some aspects of the work to end violence against women have benefited from the ideological shifts associated with the buildup of America’s prison nation. These “benefits” include harsher punishments for so-called violent perpetrators, technological advances to monitor threatening and illegal behavior, and a fundamentally conservative public commitment to “law and order” that does not take into account the roles that families play in social stability. To the extent that these changes can be considered advantages at all, it is critical to note that they have benefited groups of women who have power much more than others. Indeed, there is evidence that some women are safer in 2012 than they were 25 years ago because of the success of the anti-violence movement in changing policy and because of America’s growing prison nation and the concurrent focus on punishment in the United States.⁴ At the same time, there is growing concern about women with less power who are in as much danger as ever, precisely because of the ideological and strategic direction the anti-violence movement has taken during the buildup of America’s prison nation.

This, the central argument of this book, takes me back to the blatant contradiction that I initially felt between white feminist anti-violence activism and Black community organizing efforts. Still, after 25 years, racism persists in the mainstream anti-violence movement, and some leadership in communities of color continues to refuse to pay sufficient attention to gender inequality. In fact, the politics that led to the buildup of America’s prison nation may have actually deepened the divide between mainstream anti-violence work and marginalized Black communities. That growing divide, and the women whose lives are caught in it, compelled me to write this book.

Three specific stories of male violence against Black women that I describe in detail, and the others that I reference throughout the book, inspired me. I learned about them quite by accident, not from my involvement with feminist anti-violence agencies or community-based organizations in the Black community. Upon reflection, it is the lack of response from social justice networks that I had worked within that shocked me, almost more than the stories themselves. Investigating them left me with feelings of outrage and despair and confirmed my sense that more than 25 years after my first introduction to the work in New York City and at the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Black women in low-income communities are perhaps in greater danger than ever.

A Discovery in the Schoolyard

There was something about the number of police cars, the schoolyard full of reporters instead of children, and the morning sunshine casting a bright light on such a troubling moment that made the discovery so shocking. It amazed me that an otherwise mundane object—a trash dumpster—could be transformed by one simple act of despair into a site of tragic meaning and consequence. At first, the discovery so violated my sensibilities that I couldn’t grasp its enormous significance; the scene seemed so fundamentally out of order. It took only a few moments, however, for me to realize that under different circumstances the young woman at the heart of this tragedy very well could have been my niece, my sister, or one of my female students. Indeed, any number of young Black women I have known might have become pregnant at age 15. I could well imagine that one of them might have found herself sitting in a bathroom stall at her high school, desperate and frightened, trying to figure out what to do. I attempted to convince myself that if it had been someone I knew, the outcome would have been different, although there was no way to know for sure. But on this spring morning, one particular young woman, who until this point was a stranger to me, decided that she had no better option when she went into labor at school but to deliver the baby herself, put the newborn into her backpack, and then place the backpack in a dumpster behind her south side Chicago high school.

Why? How could anyone feel so desperate? What tragic events could possibly have led to such a heinous act? There seemed to be no good explanation for what I was witnessing. The public discourse that surrounded the event offered no plausible explanations for it. When the young woman’s friends learned what had happened, they claimed ignorance of both the pregnancy and the tragic discovery in the dumpster. Her overwhelmed teachers, alienated by their work as public school educators and socially distant from their disadvantaged students, responded with shock. Her parents, distracted by pressures of negotiating a large family’s needs with insufficient resources, denied any knowledge of the young woman’s impending crisis. Then, in a bizarre and outlandish move, the media spun the story as part of an ongoing labor strike that was crippling trash collection in the city.

In a matter of hours, the wider public was riveted by local news coverage of the discovery of a newborn who died tragically, in a dumpster. The story, buttressed by stereotypical images and accompanied by the quick judgments and constraints of television sound bites, was embellished and spread quickly. A dramatic and troubling narrative emerged that portrayed a ruthless, irresponsible, and brutally uncaring young Black woman whose unconscionable behavior was heroically revealed by reporters covering the labor strike. By nightfall, most audiences accepted this analysis of the infant’s death because of the way moral condemnation and institutional disregard for their well-being have shaped the general conception of young women of color’s lives in contemporary society.^5,6

From here I will use the name Tanya to refer to the aggregate version of several similar cases where this racialized formulation of gender and class—sexually promiscuous young girls, turned into irresponsible young pregnant women and then recklessly dangerous Black mothers—can flourish in part because in many cases no one—no friend, family member, or advocate, no official representative from the state, and no reporter—asks about these young women’s lives outside of the tragic events. The fact that a dangerous series of abusive episodes could escalate in a young woman’s life for years until everything spiraled out of control is astonishing; all the while she could be repeatedly raped by her uncle, under her boyfriend’s constant surveillance, and terrified of her family or community’s response.

The more I learned about the similarities between the cases, the more I became convinced that young women’s marginalized status in their communities, coupled with their isolation, had a great deal to do with both the harm caused to the infants in these cases and the resulting furor. Like most vulnerable young women of color, these young women did not turn to formal systems as a remedy for their victimization because of the strong distrust of the criminal legal system in their disadvantaged communities. There was no official documentation of their victimization and no references in public records to the broader context of their lives. No one responsible for investigating the cases seemed to have the insight or the inclination to delve deeper into the situations to uncover the difficult circumstances they were in. And no one from their communities spoke out to support them or offer more information. There was no counter-narrative of how the combination of childhood sexual abuse, adolescent intimate-partner violence, racial stigmatizing, and social marginalization could turn lethal; resulting in young women’s desperate feelings of hopelessness. The absence of such a counter-narrative combined with community silence and the passivity of anti-violence advocacy groups around cases like these is deeply disappointing.

As a result, highly sensationalized, oversimplified versions of these stories prevail. The institutions that should have protected young women are not held accountable for their failure to intervene. The adults who should look out for their well-being are absolved of any responsibility as they claim shock and horror. Members of the advocacy community distance themselves from these cases. Because of the profound stigma associated with such events and young women’s social vulnerability, the tragic circumstances that culminated in pregnancies and the outcomes were ignored.

The aggregate version of several cases is emblematic of hundreds of other Black women in low-income communities where disadvantages are concentrated, and who experience male violence during an era in which public policy has virtually locked them into desperate and often dangerous situations. This public policy environment is the prison nation I referred to earlier, where conservative state forces have gradually but systematically eroded the rights, privileges, and opportunities afforded disadvantaged groups. In cases like Tanya’s, the political dynamics of a prison nation interact with racial and other stigmas in such a way that women of color are more likely to be treated as criminals than as victims when they are abused. Indeed, the victimization of some Black women seems to invoke a set of institutional reactions that lead to further vilification, rather than protection or support. In the face of ongoing abuse, these young women acted out of desperation to shield themselves from further harm, largely because of the early lessons learned as poor, young, Black women trapped in dangerous interpersonal relationships. The media’s portrayal of these events typically furthered the criminalization of their experience. Because young Black women in these circumstances are depicted not as frightened, pregnant adolescents who are raped and abused by men in their families, but as criminal defendants charged with neonaticide, it is virtually impossible for the mainstream public, their communities, or their potential advocates to understand their vulnerability or to respond accordingly. Instead, these women became known as “perpetrators” of one of the most unthinkable crimes a woman could commit; the “ultimate other,” immoral and beyond redemption in the eyes of a society that is increasingly committed to unconditional punishment.

Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation⁷ is about how the prevailing analysis and the dominant rhetoric about violence, race, class, gender, and sexuality conspire to limit comprehension of the experience of male violence for Black women like Tanya. The conventional analysis of crime and victimization, and the public policy that it reflects, makes it impossible to fathom that a young Black woman’s options could be so limited that she would feel compelled to place her newborn in a backpack and leave the bundle in the school trash. As such, these situations became a criminal matter for the police.

The Brutality in Public Housing

Three weeks after a young Black woman was arrested for murder of her infant, just nine blocks south of her high school, Ms. B was watching television in her small apartment when she heard a loud knock at the door. When she opened it hesitantly, she was violently pushed back and thrown against the wall of her narrow hallway. The lightbulb had burned out, which prevented her from seeing their faces, but Ms. B was sure that the intruders were the five undercover Chicago police officers who had been harassing her for three months. She was terrified that they had come back to make good on their ongoing threat to “never let her forget who she is.”⁸

This intrusion, the latest in a series of violent attacks, could be traced back to an evening two months earlier when the same police officers stopped Ms. B outside her apartment building in the large public housing complex where she had lived for 27 years, which had recently been targeted for demolition by the city’s Department of Housing.⁹ Paradoxically called “The Plan for Transformation,” the city’s decision to tear down the building represented a complex set of public policy decisions that included temporarily suspending public services in the area, increasing police surveillance of residents during the transition, and advancing a public relations campaign to convince homeowners in neighboring communities that the widespread destruction of this disadvantaged community would ultimately benefit them.¹⁰

The initial attack on Ms. B was facilitated by the barrenness of the landscape; approximately 75 percent of the units were empty at the time. Former residents had been forced to leave their homes for unfamiliar neighborhoods in outlying areas where the housing was even less secure than the tenuous—but familiar—environment they were accustomed to as residents of deteriorating public housing in the city. The arbitrary and chaotic nature of the human dispersion meant that the remaining residents, mostly Black women and their children, did not know which apartments were occupied and by whom. Women like Ms. B were left to fend for themselves, making their way through a once lively but increasingly desolate neighborhood. Now her daily life—trips to the grocery store or the laundromat, visits to members of her family, and other activities—were fraught with the risks that characterize abandoned and isolated streets. Ms. B did not expect that the police would pose the greatest danger to her life.

On the evening of the first attack, the five undercover officers, three with guns drawn, accosted Ms. B outside of her building and demanded that she give them her apartment keys. The officers then forced Ms. B into the one working elevator and, when the door opened on her floor, pushed her inside the apartment. They then proceeded to ransack her home, throwing her belongings around and breaking precious objects (like a picture of a brown-skinned Jesus) while they cursed and threatened her, referring to her in sexually and racially demeaning terms like “nigger-cunt-bitch.” Three of the officers broke down the door to her 19-year-old son’s bedroom and ordered him and a visiting friend to lie face down on the floor while they handcuffed them. Three officers took turns punching and kicking them for more than 30 minutes before taking them forcibly out of the apartment. In response to Ms. B’s pleas for mercy for the young men, the two police officers who remained in the apartment led her to the bathroom, ordered her to remove all of her clothing, to lie down on the floor, to spread her legs, and to effectively do an internal cavity search on herself while they stood over her and watched.

During the vicious attack, the police offic...