{"id":896,"date":"2024-06-25T14:00:15","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T18:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/mcrp-journal\/?page_id=896"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:11:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:11:17","slug":"thinking-outside-of-the-white-box-an-afrofuturistic-critique-of-terry-stops","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/mcrp-journal\/in-print\/volume-15-2023\/thinking-outside-of-the-white-box-an-afrofuturistic-critique-of-terry-stops\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking Outside of the \u201cWhite Box\u201d: An Afrofuturistic Critique of Terry Stops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What would the future look like if the privacy invasions that Black Americans are currently subjected to were not so normalized? This Note brings an Afrofuturistic perspective to the analysis of <em>Terry<\/em> stops, putting forward an alternative legal paradigm that uplifts Black Americans, their privacy, and their experiences, rather than police practices. Part I of this Note looks to the past, drawing on Afrofuturism\u2019s tenant of reclamation, and assesses the development of vagrancy laws. Under these laws, vague legal standards allowed law enforcement to criminalize Black people after the end of slavery, punishing those who fell outside of the \u201cwhite box,\u201d or the social norms ascribed to whiteness. This threat of state violence swallowed any meaningful expectation of privacy, carrying forward the legacy of enslavement.<\/p>\n<p>Part II then discusses the similarities between the violations of privacy found in vagrancy laws and violations of privacy found in the use of <em>Terry<\/em> stops today. <em>Terry<\/em> stops, and the resulting threat of constant surveillance, have changed how Black Americans navigate public space. Like the vague standards in vagrancy laws, the requirement of \u201creasonable suspicion\u201d to conduct a stop is weaponized by law enforcement to punish those outside of the \u201cwhite box.\u201d Further, this Note argues that the current Constitutional threshold for assessing whether state action violates the Fourth Amendment\u2014whether someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy\u2014is deficient. It too is a function of the \u201cwhite box,\u201d and fails to account for the Black American experience. Moreover, use of this standard maintains the status quo and fails to guarantee actual privacy. Part III then envisions what the law could look like under Afrofuturism; a future where we actually work to address the systemic harms imposed by <em>Terry<\/em> stops.<\/p>\n<p>Continue Reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/mcrp-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2024\/06\/GT-GCRP240006.pdf\">Thinking Outside of the \u201cWhite Box\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What would the future look like if the privacy invasions that Black Americans are currently subjected to were not so normalized? This Note brings an Afrofuturistic perspective to the analysis [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"parent":879,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-896","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/mcrp-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/mcrp-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/mcrp-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/mcrp-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/mcrp-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/mcrp-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":897,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/mcrp-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/896\/revisions\/897"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/mcrp-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/mcrp-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}