This Essay explores police practices that marginalize Black people by limiting their freedom of movement across the spaces of Black neighborhoods. In an earlier article, I theorized “racial territoriality” as a form of discrimination that “excludes people of color from—or marginalizes them within—racialized White spaces that have a racially exclusive history, practice, and/or reputation.” In this Essay, I consider how my theory of racial territoriality could apply to policing. It offers an account of how police not only criminalize Black people but also criminalize Black spaces, ostensibly justifying them—and the people who live in or frequent them—as “natural” targets for police activity. As an example of racially territorial policing, the Essay discusses the Supreme Court’s decision in Illinois v. Wardlow and the costs that it imposes by granting police significant discretion to stop people in areas that they define—often inaccurately, according to some research—as having high levels of crime.

这篇文章探讨了警察通过限制黑人社区的行动自由来边缘化黑人的做法。在较早的一篇文章中，我将“种族领土性”理论化为一种歧视形式，“将有色人种排除在或边缘化在具有种族排斥历史、实践和/或声誉的种族化白人空间中”。在这篇文章中，我考虑了我的种族领土理论如何适用于警务。它描述了警察如何不仅将黑人定为犯罪，还将黑人空间定为犯罪，表面上证明他们——以及居住或经常光顾他们的人——是警察活动的“自然”目标。作为种族领土治安的一个例子，这篇文章讨论了最高法院在伊利诺伊州诉伊利诺伊州案中的裁决。