Zero-Tolerance Policing, Stop-and-Frisks, and the Control of Black Sexuality and Gender

• In Event: Voices of Criminalized Young People of Color: Intersections of Race, Sexuality, Gender, Immigration, and Silence

Abstract

With the proliferations of “zero-tolerance” and “stop-and-frisk” policing over the last three decades, residents of impoverished black communities have become subject to an intense and harmful form of street-level criminalization. In this study, we show that although it is intended as a technique for controlling crime, aggressive policing constitutes a pervasive form of state control over black sexuality and gender. Drawing on fieldwork with black youth living on Chicago’s south side, we demonstrate that constant (threats of) police stops serve to reinforce hegemonic masculinity premised on the normative ideals of middle-class, white heterosexuality. In an attempt to reduce the probability of becoming subject to police contact, youth feel compelled to perform “intimate masculinity,” which is characterized by exaggerated displays of emotional sensitivity, physical vulnerability, and heterosexual romance. These performances alter the local sexuality and gender regime, increase young women’s exposure to the criminal justice system, and exacerbate vulnerability to criminal victimization. We thus articulate an interactional mechanism by which by which individuals come to understand, enact, and manipulate the dominant symbols, meanings, and rules of sexuality and gender that are demanded by the “gendering state.”

Authors

• Forrest Stuart, University of Chicago

• Ava Benezra, University of Chicago