Identity, Race and the State: Policing Black Sexuality

Abstract

In contemporary news there have been several highly salient incidents where a black person has been shot and or killed by a police officer, security guard, or vigilante. But in actuality, in 2012 alone, there were 313 African American killed by police, security guards and vigilantes (Eisen, 2014). That is a rate of one African American killed every 28 hours (Eisen, 2014). With this in mind it is the oppressive state, that minority communities should be suspicious of. It is not the politics of the right or left that minorities should be leery of, it is white racist mythology manifested through state action. In order to control a group of people the state must use two things: law and force. We see the force in that there are roughly six blacks to every one white person incarcerated in the U.S and the extrajudicial killings but we do not focus enough on the law itself and the rationales and assumptions connected to them (Sentencing Project, 2012; Eisen, 2014). Cohen, Brown and Organski (1981) find that the expansion of state power is highly correlated with collective violence. I will show how these and other extralegal forms of policing black sexuality have persisted throughout history and how even today these extralegal killing of blacks have a sexual undertone and how public memory has been altered to [re]signify what these incidents mean. But most importantly I will show how the state has supported and continues to support the policing of black sexuality though public policy.