Crackdown in the Village: LGBT Youth and the Struggle Over the Right to Public Space

• In Event: 258 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Paper Session. Race, Class and Spatial Justice

Abstract

Ethnographic research documenting police abuse is typically centered in poor black communities, but this study examines police oppression of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) youth of color in the predominately-white Christopher Street area of Manhattan’s West Greenwich Village. Youth subjugation is exacerbated through the intersectionality of racism, classism, and homophobia expressed by residents during local community-police meetings. These articulations project a negative discourse of collective “delinquency” onto LGBT youth of color which promotes an environment that encourages heightened surveillance as well as oppressive police tactics. In seeking to control and limit the use of public space, police deny LGBT youth equal protection under the law, and thus facilitate civil liberty violations which relate to larger racist state polices. This study explains how discriminatory state police power is exercised and its relationship to the conflict over the meaning and use of public space.

Author

• Jeff McGraham, Graduate Center of the City University of New York