Intimate Injustice, Political Obligation, and the Dark Ghetto
Author(s): Shatema Threadcraft
Source: Signs, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Spring 2014), pp. 735-760
Published by: University of Chicago Press
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Shatema Threadcraft
Intimate Injustice, Political Obligation, and the Dark Ghetto
I
culminating in the tragic death of teenager Sakia
Gunn, who was murdered in an incident of sexist street harassment at
a Newark bus stop in 2003, Hawley Fogg-Davis ðnow Heath FoggDavisÞ argued that blacks should not tolerate the same-race street harassment that pervades urban communities: “There are specific ‘oughts’
that ought to be taught within black families, schools, churches, and community organizations concerning the treatment of black girls and women
within black civic life, and black feminists should not equivocate on this.
Chief among these ‘oughts’ is for boys and men to understand the psychological and existential harms they inflict when they participate in a longstanding culture of street harassment, and for black girls and women not
to dismiss such harm as trivial” ð2006, 74Þ. The problem of gendered public violence is perceived as so pervasive for young women of color in inner
cities that a growing number of urban social activists have begun to address
the sexist street harassment they disproportionately face. The Brooklynbased organization Girls for Gender Equity, for example, has politicized the
challenge of affording inner-city girls and young women the same access to
public space as boys. Arguing that boys and young men must learn to share
the street fairly because it is not an exclusively male space, Girls for Gender Equity has made sexist street harassment its raison d’être. Police and
school officials’ singular focus on the issue of male gang violence leads
many young women to conclude that gender-based violence, intimidation, and harassment do not matter to community leaders or law enforcement officials. Girls for Gender Equity places sexist street harassment on a
continuum of public violence that circumscribes girls’ movement to school,
home, and places of leisure. Precisely because such constraints negatively
affect girls’ psychosocial development, these social justice activists are
campaigning to pressure community members to create conditions in pubn response to events
I would like to thank Deborah Gray White, Donna Murch, Minkah Makalani, Melanye
Price; the members of the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Mia Bay, Ann Fabian,
Brittney Cooper, and Stéphane Robolin; and the members of the Rutgers Center for Race
and Ethnicity’s Mellon Sawyer Seminar “Race, Space, and Place,” Drucilla Cornell, Cyndi
Daniels, Sue Carroll, Al Tillery, Andrew Murphy, and Lisa Miller for their helpful comments
on earlier drafts of this essay.
[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2014, vol. 39, no. 3]
© 2014 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/2014/3903-0013$10.00
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lic spaces that foster the healthy development of all children ðSmith, Van
Deven, and Huppuch 2011Þ.
In taking up the issue of same-race street harassment, feminist theorists
and activists call attention to a race-gendered dimension of a just society
that is omitted in leading theories of justice. The magnitude and pervasiveness of the practice are not exaggerated in either Fogg-Davis or Girls
for Gender Equity’s accounts. It is a significant problem that community
institutions often simply ignore, and calls for acknowledgment represent
a significant step in the right direction. Yet in framing the issue as a problem to be addressed in and by the black community, primarily through
pronouncements from its institutions that can be taken up immediately by
individual community members, this approach fails to consider the pervasive effects of racism on everyday life in impoverished urban neighborhoods in the contemporary United States, and in particular, it neglects the
effects of racism on gendered subject formation. It also fails to consider
how any fair assessment of the obligations of blacks must consider the
historical events and contemporary circumstances that have produced and
maintained black enclaves in inner cities and the survival practices within
them. Racist violence; racial discrimination in the practices of banks, mortgage companies, and real estate agents ðas well as public housing policiesÞ;
and continuing economic marginalization and constraint have to be taken
into account in developing a comprehensive theory of justice for young
women as well as in outlining shorter-term strategies for social change.1
Black community institutions, which Fogg-Davis correctly identifies as the
site of change, must do more than issue “shoulds” to individuals who may
or may not possess the capacities necessary to undertake the desired behavior; the institutions must develop strategies that enable nonviolent
interactions. Yet institutional racism has bequeathed to black community
institutions far greater challenges than those facing institutions within
the wider society—particularly when it come to the issue of public violence.
How then can they be expected to meet these greater challenges with significantly fewer resources?
Fogg-Davis and the work of Girls for Gender Equity call attention to
one important obstacle that women and girls in black communities face in
the quest for what I call intimate justice. But addressing intimate injustice
is significantly complicated by the effects of other injustices constraining
all residents. In this article, I place the experiences of African American
women and girls at the center of analysis in order to demonstrate the de1
For informative discussions of these historical and contemporary practices, see Massey
and Denton ð1993Þ and Jaspin ð2007Þ.
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fects of conceptions of justice that fail to take race and gender seriously.
Using Tommie Shelby’s ð2007Þ searing account of the impact of institutional racial injustice on civic obligation in the “dark ghetto” ðClark 1965Þ
as my point of departure, I demonstrate why any comprehensive theory of
justice must attend to intimate justice.2 If black women and men are to
experience the full benefits of a just society, then we must find a means
to address barriers to free sexual expression, reproduction, and caregiving
as well as disproportionately punitive scrutiny, violence, and intimidation
across a range of institutions, including institutions regulating reproduction and care, that circumscribe their lives in contemporary US cities. Establishing meaningful intimate justice is every bit as important as economic
and political justice.
Gendered contours of Shelby’s dark ghetto
Shelby’s “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto” ð2007Þ is an impressive mobilization of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice ð1971Þ. In his nowfamous formulation, Rawls argued that a just society is characterized by
equal liberty but that equal liberty does not necessitate economic equality.
Although formal political equality is absolutely essential according to Rawls,
differences in economic status are acceptable as long as any economic differences make the worst-off better off than they would otherwise be. In
such a well-ordered society, each citizen has reciprocal obligations to fellow citizens to uphold existing institutions and respect the rules by which
those institutions operate. Many theorists claimed that the United States
roughly approximates Rawls’s two principles of justice: the US Constitution guarantees equality before the law, and the capitalist economic system
ensures that the poor in this country are far better off than the poor elsewhere. Thus, all US citizens are bound to uphold the existing political order. At a time when struggles over civil rights, racism, the Vietnam War,
economic inequities, and the Equal Rights Amendment brought millions
of citizens into the streets protesting the legitimacy of existing institutions, the adequacy of Rawls’s theory of justice and its applicability to the
United States were subjects of intense debate.
In a powerful intervention into these debates, Shelby has argued that
political and economic conditions in dark ghettos fail to meet Rawlsian
2
The term “dark ghetto” is taken from Kenneth Clark’s classic work Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power ð1965Þ. Shelby is less concerned with how the civic obligations of all
blacks are changed by racial bias than with the specific situation of those in spaces of poverty.
That is my concern as well.
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standards of justice. Far from providing formal equality and economic opportunity, US political institutions at local, state, and federal levels have
been riddled with racial bias. African Americans have not possessed equal
formal political power relative to members of the wider society. They have
not had equal access to employment-oriented skill acquisition or equal access to employment itself. They have not experienced equal treatment
within the criminal justice system. On the contrary, they have suffered political and economic marginalization despite constitutional guarantees of
equality under the law. And they have been subjected to racially motivated
heightened scrutiny and disproportionate police harassment, intimidation,
and violence.3 Data to substantiate such claims are readily available. To take
just one example from New York City police stop-and-frisk policies, “in
2009, a record 575,304 people were stopped, 87 percent of whom were
Black and Hispanic, while from 2005 to 2008, approximately 80 percent of
total stops made were of Blacks and Latinos, who comprise approximately
25 percent and 28 percent of New York City’s total population, respectively.”4 In the words of the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Vincent Warren, “2009 was the worst year for stop-andfrisks on record. For many kids, getting stopped by the police while walking
home from school has become a normal afterschool activity, and that’s
tragic.”5 Moreover, although residents of dark ghettos are often in contact
with police, they have far less personal security than members of the wider
society. They are subject to both black-on-black violence and brutality at
the hands of the police ðAnderson 1999Þ.
Illuminating the effects of economic marginalization, Shelby draws
much-needed attention to the assault on human dignity and the resulting
sense of alienation and nonbelonging associated with racial and spatial in3
It should be noted, however, that Shelby believes that if Rawlsian conditions were met,
then there would be justice. Specifically, Shelby argues that if Rawls’s fair equality of opportunity principle were to be realized within the institutions of the wider society’s basic
structure, this principle “would mitigate, if not correct, race-based disadvantages by ensuring
that the life prospects of racial minorities are not negatively affected by the economic legacy of
racial oppression” ð2004, 1711Þ. He supports the application of Rawlsian principles—without “radical revisions,” as Charles Mills states ð2013, 1Þ—to the problem of racial justice.
Mills disagrees about what justice here, and racial justice more broadly, requires, arguing that
the application of Rawlsian principles alone, without redress, will not suffice ðsee Pateman and
Mills 2007Þ. Although their debate raises important issues, to address them fully would be
well beyond the scope of this article.
4
Center for Constitutional Rights, “New NYPD Data for 2009 Shows Significant Rise in
Stop-and-Frisks: More than Half Million New Yorkers Stopped Last Year,” press release,
February 17, 2010, New York, https://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/new-nypd
-data-2009-shows-significant-rise-stop-and-frisks%3A-more-half-million.
5
Center for Constitutional Rights, “New NYPD Data for 2009.”
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justice. He conceives the relegation of dark ghetto residents to low-wage
menial jobs within an advanced capitalist, consumerist society as a potent
form of economic and political marginalization. He also connects residents’
sense of alienation from the wider society to the experience of violence, intimidation, and harassment at the hands of agents of the criminal justice
system that blacks, particularly black males, encounter as they move through
neighborhood streets. Precisely because of such pervasive inequity, Shelby
asserts that low-income inner-city blacks do not have the same obligations
as those that bind members of the wider society. They are not obligated, for
example, to adhere to the wider society’s norms regarding work; they are
not required to seek menial employment. On the contrary, they are justified
in seeking economic opportunities within a parallel economy, defined as illicit by society at large. Rather than insisting that dark ghetto residents acquiesce to the dignity-destroying racist economy, Shelby ð2005Þ suggests
that dark ghetto streets become reasonable work spaces under conditions
of injustice.6
Although individual residents may reasonably engage in “deviant” economic and social behavior—that is, behavior that deviates from established
social norms—Shelby insists that they must refrain from violent behavior.
Additionally, although impoverished blacks do not have the same set of
civic obligations that bind people within the wider society, they do have
obligations to themselves and to one another. Black inner-city residents retain the duty to strive—with community members and allies in the wider
society—for racial justice, which Shelby defines as the complete application
of liberal principles of economic and political opportunity across the color
line. Noting that the fight for racial justice requires racial solidarity, Shelby
suggests that residents must not take part in activities, including interpersonal or civic violence against fellow dark ghetto residents, that erode that
solidarity. Thus, Shelby concurs with Fogg-Davis’s prescription that the
black community must establish codes of conduct that sustain black solidarity and civic life.
I agree with Shelby’s assessment of the injustice of dark ghetto political
and economic conditions. Yet his account of the residents of the dark
ghetto leaves much to be desired. All residents, in his account, seem to be
6
Shelby also defends a sense of self-restoring oppositional or defiant attitude with regard
to the wider society’s authority figures, codes of behavior, and economic and civic norms. I
see Shelby’s “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto” ð2007Þ as applying the arguments he
made regarding racial solidarity in We Who Are Dark ð2005Þ to a specific location: spatially
isolated, politically and economically marginalized black neighborhoods. The “deviance” he
defends concerns what blacks should do until there is Rawlsian justice in these communities.
In the book, he argues that blacks must commit to racial solidarity in order to achieve the extension of Rawlsian principles of justice to blacks.
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more or less fully developed. He depicts a world of presumably male adults
and adolescents unencumbered by sexual, reproductive, or caring obligations. Like many liberal theorists before him, Shelby describes residents
who do not appear to participate in the system of social-reproductive cooperation. They manifest no concerns about the needs of the young, the
elderly, or even their own daily sustenance. Because this gendered system
of social cooperation goes unremarked in Shelby’s account of dark ghetto
conditions, there is no mention of the impact that racial bias and overall
unfairness, past and present, have on those who assume caregiving responsibilities. Shelby devotes no attention to the manifold ways that residential segregation and disparate racial geography compound current social
reproductive unfairness. Nor does he consider how past and present social reproductive unfairness affects individual residents’ capacities to refrain
from violence.
In Shelby’s account, there seem to be only older and younger male
dark ghetto residents—economic actors all—and police on the street. Each
young man is free to choose, and fully capable of choosing, his relations,
affiliations, and the nature of each of his discrete interactions each day. In
making these choices, he confronts only the choices between joining the
formal economy or the parallel one, upholding norms and adhering to
nonviolence or turning to deviant economic interactions. He can also decide whether to engage in violence or refrain from doing so.
Shelby’s account of racial constraints, like his discussion of a malefocused parallel economic sector, envisions life on dark ghetto streets without women. His vision of the inner city as a space of economic actions and
transactions ignores other significant racialized systems and constraints that
contribute to a sense of alienation and nonbelonging—and indeed that have
powerful effects on the cultivation of individual capabilities, including the
capacity to choose. When women’s lives in the dark ghetto are taken into
account, new terrains of injustice become visible. When sexual, reproductive, and caring behaviors are taken into account, other key forms of racialized constraint and alienation come into sharp focus.7 Consider, for example, the institutional bias within the system of child protective services
and the constraints that system places on black caregiving and family integrity. This system functions in conjunction with other features of racial geography such as spatial mismatch, which creates longer commuting times
for dark ghetto caregivers, which in turn affects the time that residents are
7
I want to note that in an ideal world women and men would share child care responsibilities equally, and this would not have to fall under the domain of a “woman’s issue.” But
we have established that this is a nonideal world.
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able to devote to caregiving, as well as the quality of caregiving that they
are able to provide. As I will discuss in greater detail below, racist interventions by child protective services and working caretakers’ spatial isolation from relatively distant employment centers have a critical impact on
the psychological and emotional development of the male ðand femaleÞ
subjects dwelling in the dark ghetto. Racist decisions that remove black
children from their families are unjust in and of themselves, and the longer
commuting times black women must undertake are unjust in and of themselves, but they may also have profound effects on a developing individual’s
capacity to control violent reactions to inequitable treatment. Lack of attention to intimate injustice, then, leaves Shelby’s theory unable to secure
one of his prized objectives: resident youth’s compliance with nonviolent
codes of conduct that sustain black solidarity, civic life, and the struggle
for racial justice.
Shelby’s account also obscures the violence women experience in the
course of gendered, noneconomic interactions on the street. As women’s
experience of street harassment makes clear, much of human behavior
within social space is far less a function of choice and more a function of
social climate. In stark contrast to Shelby’s choosing male agent, there is
the “thrown” female subject ðYoung 1990, 46Þ. Black women have little
choice but to interact with the residents they meet on the street. They are
often compelled to interact with boys and men in the complex social environment of the dark ghetto and risk violence when they do not. Gradations of coercion and constraint circumscribe interactions between residents and state agents, men and women, and boys and girls on inner-city
streets. This thrownness complicates dark ghetto subject formation for
both males and females. As Nikki Jones ð2010Þ has noted, the urban environment that young women and girls must navigate is riddled with violence. But urban violence is related to the fact that there are few resources
available for young men of color to develop nonviolent masculine identities. There is a severe “lack of resources to help young men take on a masculine identity that does not involve physical domination or violence,” and
there are “equally limited resources available to help young women protect themselves from everyday threats of violence in their relationships with
boys and men” ð110Þ. As Elijah Anderson ð1999, 34Þ has demonstrated,
“the code of the streets is actually a cultural adaptation to a profound lack
of faith in the police and judicial system—and in others who would champion one’s personal security. The police, for instance, are most often viewed
as representing the dominant white society and as not caring to protect
inner-city residents. When called, they may not respond, which is one reason many residents feel they must be prepared to take extraordinary mea-
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sures to defend themselves and their loved ones against those who are
inclined to aggression.” Lacking the institutional support that sustains
personal security, a male black youth may have few options other than to
become someone who must constantly be on guard to defend himself,
by violence if necessary. The absence of the resources that enable male
residents to become nonviolent individuals is yet another dimension of injustice in the dark ghetto.
Recognition that nonviolent behavior is an achievement that depends
on particular social conditions and institutions indicates that an adequate
theory of justice must take social climate into account ðSen 2009Þ. To the
extent that violent masculine identities stem from racist institutions and
practices and from inadequate resources within the dark ghetto, it is unreasonable to expect boys and men simply to refrain from violence. And to
the extent that institutional deficiencies stem from racist dynamics in society at large, it does not make sense to impose the obligation to address
violence on the black community alone. A comprehensive theory of justice
must address gendered developmental patterns, as well as street interactions. Thus, a comprehensive theory of justice must attend to intimate
justice—to sexual practices, reproductive relations, caregiving, and caretaking that shape individual capacities and identities, including “choices”
to engage in violent or nonviolent behavior.
To develop a conception of justice adequate to the developmental needs
of both young women and men in the dark ghetto, we must shift from an
account of racial injustice that focuses on the unfair distribution of resources among discrete, fully formed, and relatively unencumbered residents. We must purge the vestiges of atomistic individualism that inform
notions of residents as having significant power to choose their interactions and control the nature of those interactions with civic peers and with
police. In its place, we need to craft an account of justice that illuminates
and addresses the injustice of racialized group-based insecurities that have
profound effects on individual subject formation ðAnderson 1999; Jones
2010Þ. An adequate theory of justice must engage the risk of violence and
how exposure to violence and disproportionate punishment affect not only
what resources residents of the dark ghetto can secure but also what sort
of developing residents are allowed to do and whom they are allowed to
become ðYoung 1990Þ.8 Rather than positing formal equality as sufficient,
Martha Nussbaum ð2011Þ and Amartya Sen’s ð2009Þ capabilities approach takes what
residents are allowed to do and to become as its central focus. Beyond their focus on a broad
range of capabilities, with sexual, reproductive, emotional, and affiliative capabilities spelled
out in Nussbaum’s version, I am also drawn to their attention to physical disabilities and to
8
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justice theorists must attend to and creatively address the myriad inequities, noxious practices, and racist institutions that compose the violent social climate in which subjects live. Through this understanding, an adequate theory of justice will enable subjects to be who they want to be, not
simply to have what they might want to have.
Disproportionate risk of violence, exposure to violence, and the everpresent threats of institutional and interpersonal violence and punishment
are significant debilitating phenomena within the social environment of
the dark ghetto, and all of these factors impair residents’ ability to convert
any resources they may secure into political, economic, and social reproductive well-being or functioning ðSen 2009Þ.9 But beyond the use of resources, living in the shadow of violence affects residents’ ability to do and
to become all that they would in this space, including their ability to live as
nonviolent individuals among nonviolent individuals. The impact of this
violence on residents’ doings and becomings demands the attention of justice theorists. For this reason, an adequate theory of justice must be attentive to phenomenal imbalances over and above inequitable resources.
Justice requires reform of the dark ghetto’s social climate.
In contrast to Shelby’s confidence that Rawls’s conception of justice
as fairness can be amended to secure equal economic and political opportunity beyond the color line, my conception of intimate justice requires
more than the instantiation of justice as fairness. The tacit male bias that
shapes the choosing subject cannot do justice to the challenges faced by
developing dark ghetto subjects, whose development is often interrupted
and debilitated by conditions in the ghetto. If women’s and men’s needs
and experiences are to be fully incorporated, justice theorists must move
beyond formal equality and economic opportunity to consider issues pertaining to emotional, sexual, reproductive, and caretaking capacities. Intimate justice requires attention to the quality of relationships with intimate
partners and the quality of caregiving for particular others. When women
are explicitly included in the spheres of justice, the focus must expand beyond formal and informal institutions of surveillance, regulation, and control that operate in the public domain. For the private sphere is structured
by unjust power relations regulated and controlled by the state. Contrary
to the liberal myth that the private sphere is insulated from intrusions by
their modification of primary goods with respect to said disabilities. I believe this is relevant
to the issue of violence in dark ghettos, which I address below.
9
Sen states that “primary goods are merely means to other things, in particular freedom”
ð2009, 234Þ. He also states that “the fit between a person’s holding of primary goods and the
substantive freedoms that the person can in fact enjoy, can be very imperfect, and that this
problem can be addressed through focusing instead on the actual capabilities of people” ð64Þ.
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the state, feminist scholars have demonstrated that black women have never enjoyed the mythic privileges of privacy. Their sexuality, reproduction,
child rearing, and capacity for relationship building have been pervaded by
invasive state regulation.
Whereas Shelby concentrates his account of dark ghetto street-level interpersonal interaction on matters pertaining to the parallel economy and
black-on-black ðmaleÞ violence, my account of intimate justice expands the
frame to include significant noneconomic, gendered interaction that differs in important ways from the male-to-male civic interactions he describes.
If we are to succeed in removing the undue constraints facing women in
the home and on the streets, intimate justice demands that we not rest content with a call for nonviolence and collective struggle against racist injustice. As noted above, nonviolence may be difficult for individual residents to manage without significant change in the social climate of the
dark ghetto. The scope of change needed is masked because Shelby’s tacitly male residents are presented as fully formed beings who have the capacities necessary to enable all choices. Only a presumption that individual autonomy is not constrained by early childhood development allows
Shelby to insulate his male residents from the full effects of their relative insecurity, their previous care arrangements, and the violent social climate in
which they live. Shelby’s dark ghetto inhabitants seem to possess the same
capacity to refrain from violent behavior that purportedly exists among
members of the wider society, a society partially defined by its relatively
greater security provision, its better-quality care provision, and its less
hostile social climate.10 By engaging with the full extent of how violence
and insecurity within the dark ghetto profoundly shape the subjectivities of
its residents, my account of intimate justice illuminates aspects of injustice and factors that mitigate particular social change strategies that Shelby
misses. While issues of inadequate resource distribution and disproportionate surveillance, punishment, and violence at the hands of the state are
crucial dimensions of an adequate theory of justice, so too are concerns
with the formidable state intrusion into the private sphere and the residual
effects of ever-present violence on what developing subjects are able to do
and become in the dark ghetto.
As sexual, reproductive, and caretaking beings who experience pervasive racial bias in their interaction with a broad range of institutions in the
wider society—political, economic, social reproductive—dark ghetto subjects are better understood as encumbered developing subjects who are
10
The incidence of rape, incest, and domestic violence among the affluent, however, calls
into question the purported nonviolence of the male members of the wider society.
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“both capable of cooperation and also in need of periods of care” ðNussbaum 2002, 514Þ. In contrast to Thomas Hobbes’s image of persons as
mushrooms that spring full grown from the earth, men, women, and children who reside in dark ghettos ðand elsewhereÞ are beings who require
emotional and physical nurture and care.11 They are adversely affected by
systemic racial bias, which circumscribes the provision of emotional and
physical care. This is a crucial aspect of racial injustice too long neglected
in leading theories of justice. Life in the dark ghetto imposes multiple burdens on those—predominantly women—who assume the responsibilities
of caregiving within its confines. Poverty, inadequate security, and a disproportionately violent and punitive social climate affect developing male
and female residents of the dark ghetto in ways that exceed Shelby’s concern. These caretaking burdens are not private problems but part of a pattern of public violence that structures life in these communities of color.
The developmental effects of a hostile social climate, which itself is a manifestation of public violence, ensure that no individual enmeshed in the social system can be expected to refrain from violent behavior without considerable help.12 For this reason, systemic unfairness in social reproduction
must be among the first-order concerns in any account of dark ghetto justice.
Intimate injustice, past and present
To develop a conception of justice attuned to the burdens of social reproduction as shaped by the peculiar racist history and geography of the
United States, it is imperative to consider the effects of a host of historical and contemporary practices on subject formation. Shelby’s analysis of
current dark ghetto conditions is informed by the history of racialized political and economic subordination and marginalization. But it pays no
heed to “the reproductive history of African American women,” which
“has been shaped by coercion, cruelty, and brutality” ðSilliman et al. 2004,
49Þ.13 As feminist scholars have documented, “Reproductive tyranny has
For a sustained critique of Hobbes’s notion, see Benhabib ð1992Þ.
I should note here that Fogg-Davis ð2006Þ is right to name the role of black civil society institutions in declaiming gender-based public violence in black communities, but those
institutions must do more than tell, they must equip, because these young men cannot do
this alone.
13
Shelby includes a brief account of historical conditions of racial injustice—slavery and
Jim Crow—but does not comment specifically on the social-reproductive unfairness of racial
orders past, including their associated violence and brutality. For full elaboration of these
injustices, see Hine ð1989Þ, Roberts ð2002Þ, Silliman and Bhattacharjee ð2002Þ, and Smith
ð2007Þ.
11
12
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taken many forms over time, including rape, forced marriages between
slaves, the breakup of slave families, sterilization abuse and the promotion
of long-acting contraceptives to control fertility, and current state welfare
policies that seek to control black women’s efforts to freely determine the
number of children they will bear. Twenty-first-century efforts to control
black women’s fertility are rooted in stereotypes of black women that were
originally created and employed to help justify slavery” ð49Þ.
The wider society has never accorded equal concern and respect to
black women’s sexual, reproductive, and caretaking life plans. On the contrary, it has actively burdened those plans, intervening to disable black
sexual, reproductive, and caretaking capacities and denying generations
of black women the opportunity to live sexual, reproductive, and caring
lives in a truly human way. For much of US history, most black women
were subject to active sexual and reproductive subordination and were compelled by economic forces and violence to provide uncompensated and
then abysmally low-waged caring labor for the wider society’s children. In
short, black women were subject simultaneously to economic and caretaking exploitation. Black women’s caring capacities, when not actively
debilitated, were systematically directed toward raising the standard of care
provided to white children. To ensure that their attention was directed toward the needs of the white community, black women were subjected to
coerced reproduction in slavery, sterilization abuse, and the targeted provision of long-acting, arguably debilitating birth control such as Norplant
and Depo-Provera. At the same time that they were denied reproductive
freedom, black women had no recourse against sexual violence at the hands
of white men ðRoberts 2002; Silliman and Bhattacharjee 2002; Smith 2007Þ.
The long history of the wider society’s failures regarding social-reproductive
fairness for dark ghetto residents, which have always disproportionately affected women, cannot be ignored in any theory of black residents’ obligation to one another and to the wider society under conditions of racial injustice.
Nor is it possible to relegate injustices in the realm of social reproduction to the past. Each day, women, including young women and girls,
must move through dark ghetto streets not simply to their places of employment and employment-oriented skill acquisition but also to sexual
and reproductive health services and child protective services. These services are racially biased, organized more to surveil, constrain, and punish
blacks as sexual, reproductive, and caring beings than to assist them. As
legal scholar Dorothy Roberts ð2008, 126Þ notes, “Many poor African
American neighborhoods have high rates of child welfare agency involve-
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ment, especially placement of children in foster care.”14 The racial geography of child protective services is marked by high levels of contact between social services agencies and parents, yet few family preservation services are available. Targeted racial bias against African American parents in
child removal policy and concentrated child welfare agency involvement
in African American neighborhoods set the parameters of institutional injustice here. The institutions assigned the task of regulating social reproduction violate principles of fairness in their standard operating procedures,
placing burdens on black parents not experienced by other parents in the
wider society. Part of the injustice here involves state decisions about what
policies to fund and state preference for punitive disruptive policies ðcontributing to the parenting punishment gapÞ over policies designed to support and reunify families ðpolicies that augment reproductive and relationship capacitiesÞ, as foster care costs more per child than adequate welfare
provision for impoverished black families ðHarburger 2004Þ.
Roberts calls US foster care an apartheid system, designed to deal with
black familial problems in disruptive and disabling ways. The charge of
apartheid certainly rings true in cities like New York, where three-fourths
of children removed from their homes are black and where one in ten children in Central Harlem is in foster care, a rate of child removal experienced
by few other poor communities:
Predominantly Latino Hunts Point, in The Bronx, is even poorer than
Central Harlem. The rate of single parenthood in the community is
the same ðand, in any event, children are no more likely to be abused
in single parent homes than in homes with two parents, when the
figures are adjusted for family incomeÞ. But a child is almost twice as
likely to be taken from his parents in Central Harlem. One in 19 children is taken in Hunts Point versus almost one in ten in Central Harlem. Compare these data, further, to a poor white community, and
there is evidence of discrimination against Blacks and Latinos: In predominantly white Ridgewood and Glendale in Queens, which has
about half the poverty rate of the other two neighborhoods, only
one in 200 children was in foster care in 1998. ðNational Coalition
for Child Protection Reform 2011aÞ
Roberts ð2008Þ points out that “researchers have yet to investigate the sociopolitical
impact of this spatial concentration of child welfare supervision—the system’s ‘racial geography’ ” ð129Þ. Nonetheless, she suggests that one impact is the erosion of trust within the
community, a factor relevant for Shelby’s discussion of solidarity.
14
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The magnitude of racial bias is astounding, particularly when one considers that the Department of Health and Human Services acknowledges
that the overwhelming number of children in foster care are there not because of abuse but because of the fairly amorphous category of “neglect.”
What gets defined as neglect often stems from issues of work-life balance,
exacerbated by the distance of caretaking laborers from employment centers ða result of spatial mismatchÞ, welfare-to-work programs, inadequate
housing—a problem with clear connections to racial discrimination in American housing markets—and inadequate child care:
Out of every 100 children investigated as possible victims of abuse,
four are “substantiated” victims of all forms of physical abuse, from
the most minor to the most severe, about two more are victims of
sexual abuse. Many of the rest are false accusations or cases in which a
family’s poverty has been confused with neglect. . . . Far more common than a child who comes into care because he was beaten are
children who come into foster care because the food stamps ran out
or because an illness went untreated after parents were kicked off
Medicaid or because a single mother trying to stay off welfare could
not provide adequate supervision while she worked. . . . Three separate studies since 1996 have found that 30 percent of America’s
foster children could be safely in their own homes right now, if their
birth parents had safe, affordable housing. . . . A fourth study found
that “in terms of reunification, even substance abuse is not as important a factor as income or housing in determining whether children will remain with their families.” ðNational Coalition for Child
Protection Reform 2011b; see also White and Rog 2004, 389Þ
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform ð2011bÞ states that
while parents need obvious things like reliable and safe day care and babysitting, they are offered only foster care. This is decidedly unjust given
the history and current patterns of residential segregation and the placement of employment centers in the United States.
Beyond their treatment by social services agencies, black women also
face major issues pertaining to transportation. As Edward Soja ð2010Þ has
documented, transportation policy is structured around the commuting
needs of the average white male worker, which differ markedly from the
needs of dark ghetto residents. Black women caregivers are concentrated
in inner cities relatively distant from employment centers ðKain 1968Þ.
They disproportionately rely on public transportation to get to their jobs.
Working longer hours to make ends meet, they then face longer commut-
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ing times than wage-earning caretakers within the wider society.15 The
difficult commuting situation that results from the mismatch between
black residential areas and employment sites unduly burdens residents’ capacity to provide care for particular others. It diminishes the time they are
able to spend providing care and may also diminish the quality of the care
they provide. Long work days and prolonged commuting times that contribute to physical exhaustion are then coded by the social services bureaucracy as neglect, which contributes to the overrepresentation of black children in the foster care system. Long working hours and long commutes
also diminish the time black women can spend with intimate partners and
the quality of the relationships they forge.
An adequate theory of justice must engender a comprehensive racial
justice program that merits the allegiance and solidarity of the dark ghetto
residents whose lives are constrained sexually, reproductively, and in terms
of caregiving. Intimate justice must explicitly and simultaneously address
barriers to residents’ free sexual expression, reproduction, and caretaking;
their experience of disproportionately punitive scrutiny, violence, intimidation, and harassment; and the political and economic barriers that circumscribe their life prospects. Justice as fairness is insufficient to bring about
intimate justice in the dark ghetto. It fails to encompass pressing issues
such as ending racial bias in reproductive health provision and child services supervision. It remains mute on questions of sexual and reproductive
health equality, such as abortion-rate parity and racial parity in police response to gender-based violence. Because it fails to take race and gender
seriously, justice as fairness offers no projects to keep children with their
families or to enable parents to develop capacities for providing care without threat of violent disruption.
Several scholars have noted the deficiencies of justice as fairness. Carole
Pateman and Charles Mills ð2007Þ have argued that the Rawlsian model
can grasp dark ghetto subjects as economically disadvantaged but not as
systematically racially disadvantaged—or intimately disadvantaged, as I argue here. And Amartya Sen ð2009Þ points out that laudable proposals
to help women economically still leave many problematic features of the
social environment intact. As my critique of Shelby makes clear, a justiceas-fairness approach also tends to treat subjects’ sexual, reproductive, and
caretaking capacities as self-generating, failing to acknowledge the formative effects of state power on domestic life and subject formation. This failure has profound consequences for the scope of social justice interventions.
As Martha Nussbaum ð2002, 505–6Þ has noted, “Rawls tends to treat the
15
See Kain ð1968Þ, McLafferty and Preston ð1992Þ, Krumholz ð1997Þ, and Rabin ð1997Þ.
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family as an organization that has extrapolitical existence and to ask how
far the state may interfere with it. If, instead, he had recognized the foundational character of the state’s presence in the family, he might have
granted that it makes good sense for principles of justice to recognize
and favor whatever units do the job of the family in a way that is compatible with political justice.” Failing to recognize that the state’s intervention into the black family has been and continues to be overwhelmingly
negative, a Rawlsian approach is less inclined to support constructive strategies of rehabilitation to counter centuries of debilitating intervention. Although justice as fairness would require an end to extant racial bias in sexual and reproductive health care and child protective services, it would not
attempt to end or compensate for phenomena such as the spatial mismatch
between home and work that affects dark ghetto caretaking. Nor would it
endeavor to distribute family preservation fairly throughout all communities.
In light of a social climate permeated by racial injustice, an adequate
theory of justice cannot continue to neglect the intimate capacities of dark
ghetto subjects. Intimate justice for those whose sexual, reproductive, and
caretaking capacities have been diminished by the dark ghetto’s debilitating social climate requires solutions more interventionist than a Rawlsian account of justice would allow. It must include projects devoted to rehabilitative and empowering forms of reproductive-health provision, projects
that create regenerative contexts for a truly enabled and unconstrained exercise of black sexual and reproductive capacities, and projects that look
beyond the idea that women should delay forming a family until they
have amassed resources comparable to the wider society’s ideal and the
idea that women who do otherwise are irresponsible.
Mapping the contours of intimate justice
To theorize intimate justice within dark ghettos, I turn to the capabilities
approach developed by Sen and Nussbaum, an approach that is not hostile to Rawls but extends his understanding of justice in constructive ways.
As a theory of justice, the capabilities approach is less concerned with the
goods that people possess than with what they are ultimately able to do
and become ðSen 2009Þ. I believe that this approach is better equipped to
address the needs of a multidimensional dark ghetto subject within a social climate that is hostile to blacks as sexual, reproductive, and caring beings.
There are many features to recommend this approach that are not addressed in Rawls’s account of justice. First, it explicitly acknowledges that
societies have social reproductive obligations to their members in addition
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to political and economic obligations ðNussbaum 2011Þ. Conceiving citizens as subjects with multidimensional developmental needs, this approach
considers residents’ political, economic, sexual, and reproductive capacities
as discrete and incommensurable. No capacity is assumed to flow directly
from the others. Moreover, justice can never be assumed to be done until
all residents are able to exercise their full economic, political, and intimate
potential. For this reason, the capabilities approach supports interventions into the family, interventions to develop capacities within hostile
social climates like the one in which black sexual, reproductive, and caring
beings live.
When a hostile climate is considered in relation to both race and gender,
it becomes clear that appropriate social justice interventions must be tailored to the specific needs of subgroups within the population. Within a
patriarchal social climate that evinces open hostility to female participation
in formal political and economic life, full female political and economic functioning may require greater support from governments than is currently
provided to privileged males who hold disproportionate power in the system ðNussbaum 2002Þ. Similarly, since black residents must attempt to
convert the resources that they secure into well-being in a racist, sexist
social climate that evinces open hostility to black intimate life, they will
require more support to reach optimal functioning than more privileged
members of the wider society.
To overcome the cumulative effects of historical and contemporary racist practices—whether in terms of the neglect of black domestic life or active debilitating intervention into it—intimate justice requires significant
modification of any standard slate of primary goods to allow residents of
the dark ghetto to reach their full functioning.16 The kinds of augmentation needed are analogous to Nussbaum’s suggestions regarding the necessity of state subsidies for women’s collectives that promote gender
equality for girls within patriarchal social climates. Within a racist, sexist
social climate, states must intervene to rehabilitate and support black intimate capacities. Residents will require increases in particular forms of
resources and support, including tailored security provision, to reach full
intimate functioning. For this reason, black self-help programs can never
suffice to transform the hostile social climate in the dark ghetto.
While some may be content to seek a complete application of liberal
political and economic principles of justice across the racial divide, intimate justice requires more. In particular, it requires innovative rehabilita16
There is little discussion of black female intimate debilitation in capabilities texts, but I
do not see the approach as hostile to the account I have given thus far.
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tive solutions with regard to family and intimate life in communities still
suffering from hostile and debilitating social environments. The intimate
capacities of developing subjects have been significantly disabled by historical and contemporary racial bias. Strategies of rectification are sorely
overdue. Far from a neutral playing field, the dark ghetto has been produced through neglect, violence, and disproportionately punitive contact,
and these must be recognized as integral mechanisms of the racialized
social climate, which carry profound consequences for individual development as well as the quality of social relationships. Each dark ghetto subject who undertakes the challenges and risks of reproduction does so with
less in terms of resources, time, support, and security because the wider
racist society has actively opposed her doing so. She is much more likely
to have had a mother with less time to transfer ideal caretaking skills because her mother too had a mother who was similarly situated or worse.
The problems she confronts are not accidents of fate but rather conditions
that result from racial injustice—centuries of neglect and debilitation. Solutions for justice in the dark ghetto must take this into account.
While female residents must never be reduced to their sexual, reproductive, and caretaking activities alone, a theory of justice that considers
residents as both economic actors and as caretakers, as both capable of
cooperating and as in need of care, must acknowledge that women perform the majority of uncompensated caring labor and that they do so
under conditions of institutional racism. A comprehensive theory of justice must address the sexual and reproductive constraints and debilitation
that dark ghetto women face, as well as the undue burdens caregivers confront, if it is to secure justice for men, women, and children.
As a key component of comprehensive justice for dark ghetto residents,
intimate justice cannot be realized through instantiating justice as fairness.
Residents’ capacities to lead truly human sexual, reproductive, and caretaking lives are not innate; those capacities must be developed and supported, and they therefore require more than institutional and interpersonal noninterference. In light of the cumulative effects of centuries of
negative state interventions that curtail black sexual, reproductive, and
caretaking capacities, it is not enough to end the biased treatment blacks
receive within the institutions that regulate intimate life or to cease punitive interventions into black domestic life. Justice requires solutions designed to rehabilitate black intimate capacities, specifically projects devoted
to raising the standard of community-defined adequate care provision in
black homes. Male dark ghetto residents are obligated to take part in this
process, but the resources and reforms necessary for this rehabilitative
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project vastly exceed those available to the black community, and therefore this project must involve members of the wider community.
Dark ghetto intimate obligations
In approaching the issue of intracommunal and societal obligations, the
question we must ask is, What must residents of the dark ghetto be required
to do for others—for society as a whole and for their neighbors—in light
of the unique political, economic, geographic, and social reproductive features of the dark ghetto? To Shelby’s account of vitiated obligations I add
that obligations that are ostensibly founded on fairness regarding reproduction and caring labor are sorely tested in the dark ghetto given the history of racial injustice in this scheme of social cooperation.17 In light of
these conditions, women who reside in dark ghettos are under no obligation to take part in the inequitable system of social reproduction that exists
within the wider society.18
And, to Shelby’s reasonable and I think impressive arguments regarding dark ghetto residents’ political and economic obligation, I add that the
biased treatment that residents have long received as sexual, reproductive,
and caretaking beings vitiates their obligations to take part in the wider society’s unjust system of social-reproductive cooperation, just as it vitiates
their obligation to accept the wider society’s efforts to structure and coerce said cooperation within dark ghettos. They have no obligation to comply with welfare reform efforts devoted to forcing caretakers into marriage
and low-wage service labor ðMink 1998Þ, for example, even when those
tactics are promulgated as a means of creating stronger obligations to work
for conditions of sexual, reproductive, and caring justice among dark
ghetto residents.
What reasonable “deviant” behaviors can be defended under such an
arrangement? I argue that black women may reasonably adopt an oppositional attitude toward social norms regarding family formation. Indeed,
17
One might note that systems of social reproduction are rarely fair. On the contrary, they
impose undue burdens on women. But this is especially true for black women, and state power
has been used to skew this system in favor of white women to the disadvantage of black
women.
18
There are considerable reciprocity-related issues regarding the gendered division of
labor in care provision within black communities. Arguably, due to lack of reciprocity, black
women could refuse to provide care. I think Nancy J. Hirschmann’s ð1992Þ gendered theory
of obligation, which calls for us to recognize that all obligations are not chosen and therefore
cannot be regulated by social contract hypotheticals, is relevant here.
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given the history and contemporary practice of state disruption of black
families, behavior that deviates widely from the acceptable norms of mainstream society is reasonable. As an apartheid system ðRoberts 2002Þ, child
protective services lack legitimate authority over black households. In cases
of child neglect ðalthough not in cases of abuse, in keeping with Shelby’s
prohibition on actions that enable violence in these communitiesÞ, black
families should not be required to surrender their children to this system.
Black women should not have to submit to racist reproductive-health service provision in their communities and might reasonably adopt self-help
techniques.
What specific menial jobs in the formal economy should black women
shun? I would venture that black women should shun those jobs aimed at
providing caring labor for the larger society outside the ghetto. Women of
the dark ghetto should be encouraged to devote their energies to subverting, not propping up, the racially biased system of reproductive regulation and inequitable cooperation.19
Regarding black obligations to other members of the black community, the problem of sexist street harassment must be addressed in concert
with increased resource provision from the wider society and creative efforts to eliminate the hostile social environment. Although they are not
responsible for all aspects of the hostile social climate in the dark ghetto,
men and masculine actors must think of themselves as part of the social
environment. As such, they should seek resources to cultivate capacities
that contribute to intimate racial justice. Indeed, they should seek to help
end the undue burdens imposed on black women in the realms of sexuality and reproduction. Black men also have a further obligation, although
they must have community support, security provision, and leadership to
help them develop the emotional capacities necessary to fulfill this duty.
With appropriate resources and support, black men must provide supportive, regenerative contexts for black female intimate life, regenerative contexts in which women are free to exercise their sexual and reproductive capacities in a truly human way in accordance with the conditions of justice
outlined in the capabilities approach. They not only are obligated to refrain
from violence but must intervene to empower women. Within a context of
systemic transformation of the social environment, the regenerative strategies that are necessary for realizing intimate racial justice presuppose strong
19
They should not, however, join a parallel economy in which the gendered division of
labor is rearticulated. If Shelby’s system is to gain the loyalty of women, it must commit to
not re-creating the gendered division of labor that obtains in the wider society. I thank Al
Tillery for pointing this out.
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black institutional commitments—collective endeavors—to address how
men and boys interact with women and girls in ghetto streets.
Situating street harassment in relation to intimate justice
Women in dark ghettos face systematic injustice in their endeavors to
live their lives as sexual, reproductive, and caretaking beings. As elaborated
above, the spatial mismatch between home and workplace, low wages,
biased reproductive-health services, and high rates of disruptive child welfare involvement drastically curtail their lives. Because male residents of
the dark ghetto also face unique burdens associated with the racist social
climate, they exercise constrained choices ðHirschmann 2003Þ—and the
levels of constraint are not fully acknowledged in Shelby’s account. But
constrained choice is compatible with disparate gendered power that can
add to the undue burdens and constraints on women’s lives in dark ghettos. In this sense, black male residents of the dark ghetto can make choices
to exacerbate or alleviate those burdens.20 The current security provision
regime and the prevailing economic and political institutions constrain
black male formal political power and economic action, yet black men themselves often constrain or dominate the civic and intimate lives of women
and girls. Subject formation in the dark ghetto is fraught, and much more
needs to be done to transform the social climate from thoroughly oppressive to supportive of full human development and functioning. However,
particularly under these conditions of constrained choice, black men and
boys must be provided resources to enhance their supportiveness of black
women.21 In addition to being the parallel economic work space Shelby
envisions, the dark ghetto street is a place where social hierarchy is created, produced, and reproduced ðNielson 2004Þ. In addition to being a
site where blacks’ overall sense of ðnonÞbelonging within the wider society is cultivated and urban injustice is enacted, the street is a critical space
of gender subordination ðMacKinnon and Siegel 2004; Nielsen 2004Þ.22
20
This is also an issue, although less so, for lesbian and gender-nonconforming women.
This issue is addressed within Nussbaum’s account of human capabilities and also touched
on in Jones’s ð2010Þ discussion of emotional resources surrounding masculine identity for innercity young men. The issue is difficult to address without strategies for intervening in subject
formation, but that does not change its necessity. I am not sure that Fogg-Davis ð2006Þ, who
makes churches and black civil society institutions the locus of responsibility, adequately accounts for the issue of subject formation in calling for an end to sexist street harassment. I agree
that black institutions have a role to play, but they cannot do it alone.
22
Laura Beth Nielsen ðin Fox 2008Þ names street harassment as “a mechanism designed
to reinforce ½traditional status hierarchies” and says that many see the issue of sexist street
21
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The street is a place where police assert undue power over young black
men, relying on the pervasive notion that young black men are criminals
to sustain their actions. Through such practices, police, aided and abetted
by the wider society, have undue power to determine what ðas opposed to
whoÞ young black men are—criminals rather than youth, for example. But
the street is also a significant space where men exercise undue power over
women and girls. Same-race street harassment accords black men and boys
undue power to determine what young women and girls are, constricting
their freedom to decide who they are and what they will do and be. Men
and boys wield this power by initiating sexualized interactions to which
girls must respond or risk violence. In the context of the hostile social climate of the dark ghetto, supported and unchecked by the patriarchal conditions in the community and the wider society, street harassment constrains young women’s and girls’ endeavors to create their own visions and
plans for their sexual and reproductive lives. It can affect their decisions
about the role of sexuality relative to other dimensions of their life plans.
It can pressure them to prioritize heterosexuality over school or sports or
their relations with other girls or, at a later point, their careers. It may accord sexual activity undue weight across all stages of their lives, bringing it
into focus too soon, too often, and in objectifying ways that fail to respect
the humanity and subjectivity of young women and girls.
The street is a space where men and boys often disrupt a young woman’s ability to decide for herself the relative priority to assign to sexual
activity. Harassing encounters may also push young women toward particular sexual partners they might not choose under other circumstances.
Thus, the street may shape black women’s sense of belonging and nonbelonging to the community and to the wider society quite differently than
it does for their male counterparts. Street harassment may teach women
and girls that neither the black community nor the wider society is committed to treating them fairly, to supporting and providing protection
for all aspects of their lives, including their intimate lives. Street harassment disempowers female residents of the dark ghetto relative to their
male counterparts and disadvantages them relative to privileged women in
the wider society whose safety and security is more likely to receive police
protection.
harassment in particular as a response to a world where women enjoy more freedom than
before. In this respect it parallels the second phase of sexual harassment, outlined by Reva
Siegel ð2004, 19–20Þ, where harassment becomes a form of turf warfare. This is also important because of Shelby’s characterization of the street as legitimate work space.
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Intimate racial justice demands that men never add to the undue burdens black women face and requires them to refrain from sexualizing and
objectifying women in ways that constrain their self-determination. In
light of black women’s historical and contemporary experience of intimate violence, black men have a particular obligation not to replicate this
form of violence. From the point of view of intimate racial justice, black
men and boys should actively intervene to empower women, helping them
to exercise their sexual and reproductive capacities in the truly human
way that has been denied them for much of our nation’s history. But black
men cannot fulfill these obligations alone. They require resources from the
wider community to transform the hostile climate and secure their safety and
security, as well as support from black community-based organizations to
redress the debilitating effects of the dark ghetto.
Conclusion
Theories of justice are too often developed as abstract propositions that
fail to consider long histories and contemporary practices of racial injustice. Grounded in the experiences of privileged men, they fail to engage
the systemic inequities of domestic and intimate life or the constraints on
sexuality and reproduction imposed on women of color. My account of
intimate justice is designed to redress these omissions. It calls attention to
the complex ways that racial and gender power structure intimate life, shaping men’s and women’s capacities to form sexual identities and relationships with intimate partners and to provide care for particular others. It
demonstrates the formative role played by state institutions in shaping private as well as public life—from the regulation of sexual and reproductive
health and the disruptive practices of child protective services to the failure
to provide security, educational and economic opportunity, and political
empowerment. By focusing on the challenges black women face, it illuminates seldom-discussed aspects of racial geography, such as the long distances between the dark ghetto and employment sites and family services
centers. It also contextualizes violence, linking police brutality, hypersurveillance, excessive arrests, and disproportionate imprisonment to the development of aggressive forms of masculinity manifested in street harassment.
A theory of intimate justice alone cannot transform the hostile social
climate in the dark ghetto. But it is better equipped to illuminate constraints
on individual action and injustice produced by institutional racial bias than
alternative conceptions. By focusing on the manifold needs of encumbered
developing subjects who affiliate and reproduce, and who require and give
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care, intimate justice is also better able to map the scope of social change
required if issues such as hostile climate and street harassment are to be
adequately addressed.
Department of Political Science
Rutgers University
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