Analysis Of The Benefits Gained For African American Women By Decriminalizing Prostitution

Everyone within my generation is familiar with Rodney King. Everyone knew that he was brutally beaten by four white police officers, and that those officers would be set free. And, everyone was outraged. Of course, I too was outraged. But, Rodney King’s story doesn’t keep me up at night. At least America was outraged by the injustice, at least there was an awareness that what happened was wrong. During the same time period, over the span of nine months, eleven black women were kidnapped, sexually mutilated, brutally beaten, strangled to death, and finally dumped in abandoned buildings under piles of trash. There is a pattern; all women were poor, black, and prostitutes. Where was the outrage? One black male is beaten up and every liberal in the country is crying out against racist violence and the culture of poverty that precipitated the L.A. riots. Eleven black women, mutilated, tortured, killed, and buried under trash and the only thing we hear, besides the deafening silence, is a local Baptist minister mourning that these women “were already among the walking dead” (Neslon 82). Certainly, this minister was not in

Even more disturbing are the incidents of police sexually assaulting sex workers. Police often trade sex acts for an informal get out of jail free card, or once arrested, they grope and fondle the body of a hand cuffed prostitute. Who are they to turn too? What recourse do these women have? Who is going to believe a prostitute over a police officer? One small survey done by an outreach program in New York, found that thirteen of thirty two who had been arrested had been sexually abused during an arrest once during their lifetime. Four of them more then once (Alexander 214). Many prostitutes feel as if they have no choice but to accept this as part of their job. Gloria Locket’s essay entitled, “What Happens When You are Arrested” depicts several of these incidents. She writes,

Before they would put us in the car, they would take our purses, dump them in the ground, and make us pick the things out of the gutter. When they decided who was going to jail, looks were a big factor. The police would take the hands of the women who were not going to jail, and they would burnt them on the hood of the engine. The women who were going to jail were piled into the back seat, usually six-seven-eight at a time. One time, the car was so crowded, one officer made me sit on his lap handcuffed…The first time I got arrested I was handcuffed from behind. The officer was drunk and tried to kiss me and fondled my breasts in the elevator…In Berkeley, one officer pulled into a very dark alley and demanded a blow job…” (39).

An example of this can be seen within the “sex tourism” industry. The convention industry is huge in this country and, because of the continued discrimination against women in employment, particularly at the management level, convention attendees are overwhelmingly male, traveling without their families. Sex workers cater to this trend. Hotels often require security to “screen” prostitutes and keep out those deemed undesirable. Pricilla Alexander argues that, “She is more likely to be stopped if she is Black, dressed in a way that violates hotel’s sense of decorum, or to noisy, then if she is white, sedately dressed, and quite.”(204). One African American women was stopped at the San Francisco Hilton; she was attending a feminist conference.

I illustrate this story to show that African American women within prostitution are vulnerable to the worst discrimination possible. Society has caste them to the bottom of the hierarchy through institutionalized economic deprivation and the stigma of what it means to be a black women in control of her own sexual being. In doing so, their plight has become isolated to only them, it does not effect the rest of us. Within many existing social dichotomies, they fall on the deviant side; white/black, male/female, rich/poor, and finally madonna/whore.

Being denied access to working under the relatively safer conditions afforded in “off-street” establishments results in African American prostitutes accounting for a disproportionate number of street workers. Although statistics regarding the number of prostitutes who work on the street are hard to come by, arrests records indicate that the black women are the majority. Numbers from the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics indicate that Whites make up for 60% of arrests, while blacks make up for 38%. These numbers are disproportionate when one considers that blacks only account for 12% of the population (354). Furthermore, a small portion of the 60% white arrests accounts for the men seeking services; this makes the numbers even more disproportionate. With 85-90% of prostitution arrests coming form the street (bayswan stat), it is clear that African American women account for a higher street population. Although police officers arrest women who work on the street and thus target African American women, they also enforce the law discriminatorily even when white wom

Some topics in this essay:
African American, Housework Campaign, Vednita Nelson, Global Exploitation, Justice Department, Killer Seattle, Outreach Project, Pricilla Alexander, Rodney King’s, Happens Arrested”, african american, african american women, american women, black women, sex workers, sex industry, decriminalizing prostitution, san francisco, police officers, sexual assault, racist hiring, racist hiring practices, vednita nelson writes, african american sex, american sex workers,