UC San Diego

Although scholars emphasize the transformative aspects of liberal and Civil Rights ideology as a remedy to past injustices, more consideration must be given to the history of identities that shape self-authorization for black women. This thesis is an intertexual analysis of the New York v. Brown, Dandridge, Hill, Johnson (N.Y. App. Div. 2007) criminal court case. Newspapers, cable news shows, and court transcripts illustrate how the focus concentrated on the women's performance of a supposed female masculinity, rather than the possibility of homophobic violence. This characterization of the women must be placed within the context of the racialization of gender and sexuality in the antebellum American south and moments that proceed. Injury to black women's bodies, in the form of rape, murder, forced removal, were not viewed as crimes because of their legal and moral standing as non -humans and property-plus. Reconstruction up to the early 1990s conveniently used representations of the black community as scapegoats and distractions of U.S. economic failures. Interestingly, the representation of the women involved in New York v Brown vilified them in the media as inherently violent not only because of their blackness, but the performance of gender. Though there has been recent legislation on hate crimes to prevent violence and the realistic possibility on the institutionalization of gay/lesbian marriage, the continued violence against black queer youth remains unchallenged and invisible. While the prison and military industrial complexes have become containers for poor and racialized bodies, critiques against rights-based redress and the creation of spaces for alternative representations offer possibilities