Raped by United States customs: Strip searches and the war on Black women

This dissertation examines the U.S. Customs Service practice of using the "drug courier" profile to inflict racialized sexual violence (i.e., strip searches) on Black women in the 1990s, based on extensive examination of the treatment of Black women passengers returning from the Caribbean to Chicago. Data from U.S. customs' records show that Black women are disproportionately singled out for strip searches. The main questions I explore are: first, why are Black women profiled to the extent that they are? Second, what does this tell us about the ideological biases of policing institutions? The U.S. Customs Service frames strip searches as a utilitarian penal practice necessary to fight the Drug War. However, I argue that strip searches of Black women need to be understood historically as a form of punishment that was widely practiced during slavery as a part of the sexual exploitation of slave women. As in the past, strip searches serve to curtail Black women's mobility and autonomy, thereby functioning like a modern day "pass system.";The dissertation examines plaintiffs' allegations and U.S. Customs' defenses in a class-action lawsuit against U.S. Customs in Chicago on behalf of 1,200 Black women. It also examines police rape cases involving Black women and lawsuits by other passengers against Customs and media discourses about racial profiling from a major U.S. newspaper in the two year period after September 11, 2001. Analysis of the materials reveals an underlying ideology that portrays Black women as criminals who therefore deserve punishment. Although U.S. Customs instituted changes in written procedures following the lawsuit, the modifications are primarily designed to frame criteria in race-neutral language. The modifications do not actually curb the ability of agents to engage in racial profiling. The study argues that liberal reform will not protect passengers of color because it does not question perceptions about race, crime, and punishment. The modifications make Customs' practices appear fairer, thus making it difficult to prove that profiling and abuse occurred. Furthermore, real reform to curb arbitrary searches has become less likely because since 9-11-01, the public has equated policing with national security.;This dissertation frames U.S. Customs' practice of strip searches as consonant with practices of other policing institutions that inflict racialized sexual violence on Black women. The racialized sexual state punishment of Black women challenges the equation of racialized punishment with Black men and of sexualized punishment with white women. The concept of racialized sexual violence helps us to rethink the way race and gender interact in the shaping of state-sanctioned punishment.