By NINA-SIMONE EDWARDS

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 Terry 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’s 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 “white box,” or the social norms ascribed to whiteness. This threat of state violence swallowed any meaningful expectation of privacy, carrying forward the legacy of enslavement. Part II then discusses the similarities between the violations of privacy found in vagrancy laws and violations of privacy found in the use of Terry stops today. Terry 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 “reasonable suspicion” to conduct a stop is weaponized by law enforcement to punish those outside of the “white box.” Further, this Note argues that the current Constitutional threshold for assessing whether state action violates the Fourth Amendment—whether someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy—is defcient. It too is a function of the “white box,” 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 Terry stops.

GEO. J. L. & MOD. CRIT. RACE PERSP. [Vol. 15:157, 2023., 29p.