“I Am Not a Prostitute”: How Young Black Women Challenge Street-based Micro-interactional Assaults

Abstract

ABSTRACTFew scholars have examined the collective experiences of young African American women living in the inner city and their strategies for navigating daily life there. I draw on nearly two years of field research in Central East Oakland, CA, to provide an ethnographic account of the daily experiences of poor young black women in urban public space1. I uncover a particular and routine type of public encounter, street-based micro-interactional assaults, that follow a pattern and are shaped by an act or a threat of sexual violence. I also examine how poor black women feel about and negotiate these events while trying to maintain their own safety.