Racial Profiling and Police Brutality

Racial Profiling and Police Brutality – What’s Gender Got to Do With It? October 7 at 4 PM; Boalt Hall.
The execution of Oscar Grant by BART Police in 2008 and the arrest earlier this year of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates once again catapulted issues of racial profiling and police misconduct to the national stage, sparking commentary from everyone from the newly elected President on down. The heightened attention to profiling and policing which followed each of these incidents offered an opportunity to examine the full scope of police misconduct as experienced by all members of our communities. But in each instance, public discourse around police misconduct remained largely limited to its impacts on the “usual suspects” – men of color – perpetuating the erasure of women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people of color’s experiences of profiling and abuse, and of the central role of gender and sex policing in race-based policing practices. This panel discussion brought together activists from across the Bay Area who challenged us to expand our analysis of the forms and impacts of police misconduct to reflect and bring the experiences of women and LGBT people of color to the center of our analysis, organizing and advocacy around profiling and policing.

Created: 10-11-2009