Romantic (In)Justice: Criminal-Legal System-Impacted Black Women’s Romantic Relationship Status and Quality

2021 ◽  
pp. 155708512110194
Author(s):  
Allison E. Monterrosa
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Romantic Relationship ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Relationship Status ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Psychological Strain ◽  
System Data ◽  
Criminal Legal System

This study of working class, heterosexual, criminal-legal system-impacted Black women described the women’s romantic histories and current romantic relationship statuses in terms of commitment, exclusivity, and perceived quality. Using intersectional research methods, qualitative interviews were conducted with 31 Black women between the ages of 18 and 65 years who were working class, resided in Southern California, and were impacted by the criminal-legal system. Data were analyzed using an intersectional Black feminist criminological framework and findings revealed six types of relationship statuses. These relationship statuses did not live up to the women’s aspirations and yielded disparate levels of emotional and psychological strain across relationship statuses.

I am Not Your Felon: Decoding the Trauma, Resilience, and Recovering Mothering of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women

2020 ◽  
pp. 001112872097431
Author(s):  
Jason M. Williams ◽  
Zoe Spencer ◽  
Sean K. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Criminal Legal System

Black women are increasingly targets of mass incarceration and reentry. Black feminist writers call attention to scholars’ need to intersectionalize analyses around how Black women interface with state systems and social institutions. This study foregrounds narratives from Black women to understand their plight while navigating reentry through a phenomenological approach. Through semi-structured interviews, narratives are analyzed using critical frameworks that authentically unearths the lived realities of participants. Themes reveal that for Black mothers, reentry can be just as criminalizing as engaging crime itself. These women face dire consequences around their mothering that induce them into tremendous bouts of trauma. Existing interlocking oppressions enflame newfound barriers due to their contact with the criminal legal system—yet they survive via divergent forms of resilience.

Criminal Record Stigma and Surveillance in the Digital Age

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Esther Lageson
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Criminal Record ◽  
Criminal Records ◽  
Descriptive Account ◽  
System Data ◽  
Criminal Legal System ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Identifiable Data

This review analyzes criminal record stigma and surveillance through the concept of digital punishment: the collection and widespread dissemination of personally identifiable data by the American criminal legal system and subsequent private actors. The analysis is organized into three parts: a descriptive account of the technological, legal, and social factors that have created mass criminal record data; a theoretical framework for understanding digital criminal records through stigma and surveillance theories; and an argument that contemporary criminal records constitute digital punishment, with emphasis placed on how digital records are disordered, commodified, and biased. I close by raising policy-relevant questions about the widespread disclosure and uses of criminal legal system data for extralegal purposes. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 5 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals Black feminist intersectionality is vital to group analysis: Can group analysis allow outsider ideas in?

2021 ◽  
pp. 053331642199776
Author(s):  
Suryia Nayak
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Online Platform ◽  
Large Group ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion ◽  
Analytical Structure ◽  
The Relationship

This is the transcript of a speech I gave at an Institute of Group Analysis (IGA) event on the 28th November 2020 about intersectionality and groups analysis. This was momentous for group analysis because it was the first IGA event to focus on black feminist intersectionality. Noteworthy, because it is so rare, the large group was convened by two black women, qualified members of the IGA—a deliberate intervention in keeping with my questioning of the relationship between group analysis and power, privilege, and position. This event took place during the Covid-19 pandemic via an online platform called ‘Zoom’. Whilst holding the event online had implications for the embodied visceral experience of the audience, it enabled an international attendance, including members of Group Analysis India. Invitation to the event: ‘Why the black feminist idea of intersectionality is vital to group analysis’ Using black feminist intersectionality, this workshop explores two interconnected issues: • Group analysis is about integration of parts, but how do we do this across difference in power, privilege, and position? • Can group analysis allow outsider ideas in? This question goes to the heart of who/ what we include in group analytic practice—what about black feminism? If there ‘cannot possibly be one single version of the truth so we need to hear as many different versions of it as we can’ (Blackwell, 2003: 462), we need to include as many different situated standpoints as possible. Here is where and why the black feminist idea of intersectionality is vital to group analysis. On equality, diversity and inclusion, intersectionality says that the ‘problems of exclusion cannot be solved simply by including black [people] within an already established analytical structure’ (Crenshaw, 1989: 140). Can group analysis allow the outsider idea of intersectionality in?

Customer Service Representatives

2021 ◽  
Vol 120 (3) ◽  
pp. 553-571
Author(s):  
Julian Kevon Glover
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Customer Service ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Transgender Women ◽  
Average Life Expectancy ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Affective Labor ◽  
Murder Rate ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Customer Service Representatives

This article investigates sex work among Black transgender women in Chicago’s ballroom scene, drawing on ethnographic data to argue that Black transwomen engage in sex work as a practice of self-investment undergirded by an epistemological shift regarding the centrality of affective labor to their work. In so doing, interlocutors reap the benefits of deploying embodied knowledge—the harnessing and transformation of insight derived from lived experiences of racial, gender, and sexual subjection into useful strategies, tactics, and tools—to secure material and human resources necessary for survival. A focus on how Black transwomen live, despite continued physical, spiritual, socioeconomic, political, and cultural annihilation, remains critically important given the myriad indicators (low average life expectancy, low annual income, disproportionally high murder rate, etc.) that expose the world’s indifference to the plight of this community and Black bodies writ large. Further, the author places interlocutors in conversation with Black feminist historians’ and theorists’ discussions of sex work among Black women to expose points of convergence between Black cis- and transgender women. The author also complicates narratives that link sex work to “survival” and subsequently obfuscate explorations of limited and situated agency among Black women that have significant historical precedent.

Justice as a Tertiary Prevention Strategy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh Goodmark
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Partner Violence ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Partner Violence ◽  
Intimate Partner ◽  
Tertiary Prevention ◽  
Prevention Strategy ◽  
Legal Response ◽  
The Law ◽  
Criminal Legal System

This chapter addresses the question, what is justice, in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV) and examines the use of law and the legal system for the prevention of IPV revictimization (tertiary prevention). The chapter highlights the limitations of the law and criminal legal system for achieving justice for specific groups of IPV survivors, and the potential for this system cause further harm. The chapter considers alternatives to the traditional criminal legal response to IPV to secure justice and safety for IPV survivors.

scholarly journals Memeification of Black Women’s Trauma

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Stravens
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
The People ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
History Of

This piece discusses the online and offline discourses on the lives and bodies of Black femme and nonbinary individuals and the harm that is so casually inflicted upon us. Through popular stories of harm performed around famous Black women, such as with rapper Megan Thee Stallion, I connect the history of Black women in popular culture to current online spaces that continue to minimize and trivialize our trauma. I seek to highlight that these stories are not an anomaly, but rather sentiments rooted in the misogynoir that is so entrenched in western culture and have been expanded and weaponized within the online sphere. In addition, the piece challenges the universality of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in its implementation, criticizing its propensity to forget its feminine victims. It is important to emphasize where it has failed and where it needs to be intentional about the people it has overlooked, as this is a movement that began online, where this harm is currently taking place, and at the hands and energies of Black femmes, the very people getting hurt. This piece has manifested from many conversations already occurring in online Black feminist spaces about our treatment and our needs. It invites others into the fold and seeks to encourage individuals to critically reflect on how Black femme and non-binary individuals are presented on their timeline in-between the numerous BLM posts that claim to protect them.

Writing Ourselves into Existence

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-27
Author(s):  
Shardé M. Davis ◽  
Frances Ashun ◽  
Alleyha Dannett ◽  
Kayla Edwards ◽  
Victoria Nwaohuocha
Keyword(s):  
Women Students ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Research Team ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Feminist Research ◽  
Hostile Environment ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Critical Autoethnography ◽  
Research Praxis

Academia can be a hostile environment for Black women. Our research team leveraged Black feminist research praxis to produce new knowledge countering conceptions of Black women students and faculty as people who are unintelligent, produce superfluous work, and worthy of being ignored. In order to locate spaces for healing, mentorship, and validation, we engaged in a collaborative autoethnography to co-narrate our experiences while conducting a study for, by, and about Black women. Re-purposing tools from Black feminist thought, critical autoethnography, and collaborative autoethnography enabled us to write ourselves into existence, countering damaging narratives and subverting the harm inflicted by the institution.

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