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Justice, Power, and Politics
The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification
Police power was built on women's bodies.
Men, especially Black men, often stand in as the ultimate symbol of the mass incarceration crisis in the United States. Women are treated as marginal, if not overlooked altogether, in histories of the criminal legal system. In The Streets Belong to Us —a searing history of women and police in the modern United States—Anne Gray Fischer narrates how sexual policing fueled a dramatic expansion of police power. The enormous discretionary power that police officers wield to surveil, target, and arrest anyone they deem suspicious was tested, legitimized, and legalized through the policing of women's sexuality and their right to move freely through city streets.
Throughout the twentieth century, police departments achieved a stunning consolidation of urban authority through the strategic discretionary enforcement of morals laws, including disorderly conduct, vagrancy, and other prostitution-related misdemeanors. Between Prohibition in the 1920s and the rise of "broken windows" policing in the 1980s, police targeted white and Black women in distinct but interconnected ways. These tactics reveal the centrality of racist and sexist myths to the justification and deployment of state power. Sexual policing did not just enhance police power. It also transformed cities from segregated sites of "urban vice" into the gentrified sites of Black displacement and banishment we live in today. By illuminating both the racial dimension of sexual liberalism and the gender dimension of policing in Black neighborhoods, The Streets Belong to Us illustrates the decisive role that race, gender, and sexuality played in the construction of urban police regimes.
Men, especially Black men, often stand in as the ultimate symbol of the mass incarceration crisis in the United States. Women are treated as marginal, if not overlooked altogether, in histories of the criminal legal system. In The Streets Belong to Us —a searing history of women and police in the modern United States—Anne Gray Fischer narrates how sexual policing fueled a dramatic expansion of police power. The enormous discretionary power that police officers wield to surveil, target, and arrest anyone they deem suspicious was tested, legitimized, and legalized through the policing of women's sexuality and their right to move freely through city streets.
Throughout the twentieth century, police departments achieved a stunning consolidation of urban authority through the strategic discretionary enforcement of morals laws, including disorderly conduct, vagrancy, and other prostitution-related misdemeanors. Between Prohibition in the 1920s and the rise of "broken windows" policing in the 1980s, police targeted white and Black women in distinct but interconnected ways. These tactics reveal the centrality of racist and sexist myths to the justification and deployment of state power. Sexual policing did not just enhance police power. It also transformed cities from segregated sites of "urban vice" into the gentrified sites of Black displacement and banishment we live in today. By illuminating both the racial dimension of sexual liberalism and the gender dimension of policing in Black neighborhoods, The Streets Belong to Us illustrates the decisive role that race, gender, and sexuality played in the construction of urban police regimes.
312 pages, Hardcover
Published March 22, 2022
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May 10, 2022"The historian Anne Gray Fischer offers a surprising explanation for the disconnect between the myth and reality of policing in her book ... Fischer argues that it was the sexual policing of Black women that laid the legal groundwork for 'mass misdemeanor policing' and legitimized the police’s broad powers to exercise discretion."
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...
August 19, 2023
Enlightening. It makes me think of my complicity in upholding the police state without realizing.
I believe this work should be read with Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham's "Righteous Discontent" and Michele Mitchell's "Righteous Propagation" and maybe some other works exploring disability, colorism, transphobia, and sex work as it pertains to Black people. This should then be in context with U.S imperialism and neoliberalism.
The victims of sexual policing went from all Black women to a certain subset of Black women, and it's reinforced whenever, since 2014, certain women would go viral for being murdered by police (Did anyone show up? Hardly. Local organizations like individual NAACP chapters and the Church most likely did if she was in good graces with them, however.). It's uncomfortable to sit with the truth of being part of the class of Black women who is considered worthy of protection.
While I'm not a church going person, I am part of the aspiring middle class, and I am deemed a "Safe Black" due to my smaller frame and medium complexion (this matters because I was raised in predominantly white spaces). Even in Black spaces, I'm rendered a safety that darkskinned, fuller framed women aren't. They still receive safety if they are church going, however.
The Church is the beacon of community and a place of safety for Black people. Higginbotham analyzes in her work how women of the clergy initiated the politics of respectability out of survival and protection, and with the addition of Fischer's work, you can see how successful that was. Even as Black poverty is at its worse in the 21st Century, there are areas where Black residents remain protected in the eyes of police agencies due to the work of the Church and other local organizations that employed the politics of respectability to keep the community safe. The lone acts of rogue police officers getting exposed for aggressive force or murder are met with swift justice to re-instate trust in policing. And yet nothing changes. Things get worse.
I'm still learning where I can fit in in all this to help deconstruct the police state and create safer communities.
I believe this work should be read with Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham's "Righteous Discontent" and Michele Mitchell's "Righteous Propagation" and maybe some other works exploring disability, colorism, transphobia, and sex work as it pertains to Black people. This should then be in context with U.S imperialism and neoliberalism.
The victims of sexual policing went from all Black women to a certain subset of Black women, and it's reinforced whenever, since 2014, certain women would go viral for being murdered by police (Did anyone show up? Hardly. Local organizations like individual NAACP chapters and the Church most likely did if she was in good graces with them, however.). It's uncomfortable to sit with the truth of being part of the class of Black women who is considered worthy of protection.
While I'm not a church going person, I am part of the aspiring middle class, and I am deemed a "Safe Black" due to my smaller frame and medium complexion (this matters because I was raised in predominantly white spaces). Even in Black spaces, I'm rendered a safety that darkskinned, fuller framed women aren't. They still receive safety if they are church going, however.
The Church is the beacon of community and a place of safety for Black people. Higginbotham analyzes in her work how women of the clergy initiated the politics of respectability out of survival and protection, and with the addition of Fischer's work, you can see how successful that was. Even as Black poverty is at its worse in the 21st Century, there are areas where Black residents remain protected in the eyes of police agencies due to the work of the Church and other local organizations that employed the politics of respectability to keep the community safe. The lone acts of rogue police officers getting exposed for aggressive force or murder are met with swift justice to re-instate trust in policing. And yet nothing changes. Things get worse.
I'm still learning where I can fit in in all this to help deconstruct the police state and create safer communities.
November 27, 2024
Through an in-depth study from the Prohibition era to the 1980s, and case studies of three major cities (Los Angeles, Boston, and Atlanta), Anne Gray Fischer presents a comprehensive history of the control of morals by “law and order” in the United States.
The Streets Belong to Us shows how moral and anti-prostitution laws were established over the course of the 20th century, how they were applied in a violent and discretionary way by police forces, how they undermined the safety of women and, more particularly, black women, and how they translated into a system of representations of women and a desire to control their bodies and their freedom to exist in the public sphere simply. From sexual and racial profiling to the “broken windows” strategy, the mechanisms put in place and supported by the State also illustrate a desire for “social cleansing”, to the benefit of a business and capitalist class that is constantly expanding its presence in the urban environment, taking over neighborhoods and ultimately forcing their transformation.
Fischer’s book is really important and well done, drawing on often disturbing case studies, powerful testimonies, and court and carceral records sometimes saved from destruction. It shows how aggressive policing, sexual and racial profiling, discretion, and abuse have become central to police power in the fight against prostitution in the United States, and how urban dynamics and gender and race relations have changed (but not that much) over the decades.
The Streets Belong to Us shows how moral and anti-prostitution laws were established over the course of the 20th century, how they were applied in a violent and discretionary way by police forces, how they undermined the safety of women and, more particularly, black women, and how they translated into a system of representations of women and a desire to control their bodies and their freedom to exist in the public sphere simply. From sexual and racial profiling to the “broken windows” strategy, the mechanisms put in place and supported by the State also illustrate a desire for “social cleansing”, to the benefit of a business and capitalist class that is constantly expanding its presence in the urban environment, taking over neighborhoods and ultimately forcing their transformation.
Fischer’s book is really important and well done, drawing on often disturbing case studies, powerful testimonies, and court and carceral records sometimes saved from destruction. It shows how aggressive policing, sexual and racial profiling, discretion, and abuse have become central to police power in the fight against prostitution in the United States, and how urban dynamics and gender and race relations have changed (but not that much) over the decades.
November 11, 2024
Comprehensive history of moral laws and the discretionary policing of women’s bodies. If you are wanting a detailed history of anti prostitution laws, this would be a great place to start.
February 3, 2025
When laws and actions of culture are more evenly covered, diffused, shared, honored -- things will be different!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews