Crime and Punishment: Power, Criminality and the Invisible Scars of Discipline in Black Womanhood
To exist as Black in this country is to walk beneath a persistent shadow of suspicion. To be a Black woman is to shoulder not only the relentless criminalization of our Blackness, but also to endure a particular brand of punishment—one engineered to silence, diminish, and control our very womanhood. In this episode, I lay bare a searing personal narrative—not just as testimony, but as indictment. We'll confront the brutal reality of how society refuses to see Black women as fully human, opting instead to cast judgment and inflict punishment without ever pausing to ask why. Together, we’ll peel back the layers of pain, anger, and resilience that are too often twisted into stereotypes, revealing the unseen scars and the hard-won power that rises when justice is denied and empathy withheld.
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Selected Readings
1. Bridges, Khiara M. Implicit Bias and Judicial Decision Making: Black Women in Campus Conduct Hearings. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018.
- Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–1299.
- Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2000.
- Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1903.
- Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967.
6. Hall, E. V., Galinsky, A. D., & Phillips, K. W. (2015). Gender Profiling: A Gendered Race Perspective on Person–Position Fit: A Gendered Race Perspective on Person–Position Fit. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(6), 853-868.
- Harris-Perry, Melissa V. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.
- Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1984.
- hooks, bell. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press, 1981.
10. Patton, Lori D., and DeOnte R. Gordon. “Navigating the Margins: Black Women, Misrecognition, and Disciplinary Processes in Higher Education.” Harvard Educational Review 89, no. 2 (2019): 235–256.
11. Smith, Ashley N. “The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Justice: Experiences of Black Women in University Student Conduct Systems.” Journal of College Student Development 61, no. 4 (2020): 487–503.
