Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality, and Gendered Violence (New Perspectives in Crime, Deviance, and Law)

314 Pages·2008·0.96 MB·English

by  Jody Miller

Getting Played
New Perspectives in Crime,
Deviance, and Law Series
Edited by John Hagan
Clean Streets: Controlling Crime, Maintaining Order, and
Building Community Activism
Patrick J. Carr
Gender and Crime: Patterns in Victimization and Offending
Edited by Karen Heimer and Candace Kruttschnitt
The Many Colors of Crime: Inequalities of Race,
Ethnicity, and Crime in America
Edited by Ruth D. Peterson, Lauren J. Krivo, and John Hagan
Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity, and Violence
Edited by Ramiro Martinez Jr. and Abel Valenzuela Jr.
Judging Juveniles: Prosecuting Adolescents in
Adult and Juvenile Courts
Aaron Kupchik
The Technology of Policing: Crime Mapping, Information
Technology, and the Rationality of Crime Control
Peter K. Manning
Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban
Inequality, and Gendered Violence
Jody Miller
Getting Played
African American Girls,
Urban Inequality, and
Gendered Violence
Jody Miller
Foreword by Ruth D. Peterson
a
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
new york university press
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
©2008by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miller, Jody, 1966–
Getting played : African American girls, urban inequality, and
gendered violence / Jody Miller ; forewordby Ruth D. Peterson.
p. cm. — (New perspectives in crime, deviance, and law series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8147-5697-3(alk. paper : cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8147-5698-0(alk. paper : pbk.)
1.African American young women—Violence against. 2.African
American young women—Abuse of. 3.African American young
women—Crimes against. 4.African American teenage girls—
Violence against. 5.African American teenage girls—Abuse of.
6.African American teenage girls—Crimes against. 7.Victims of
violent crimes—United States—Psychology. I. Title.
HV6250.4.W65M522 2008
362.76—dc22 2007037275
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my parents,
Linda and Jerry Miller
—for a lifetime of encouragement

Contents
Foreword by Ruth D. Peterson ix
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xix
1 Perspectives on Gender and Urban Violence 1
2 Gender ’n the ’Hood: Neighborhood Violence
against Women and Girls 32
3 Playin’ Too Much: Sexual Harassment in School 67
4 Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself: Sexual Coercion
and Violence 114
5 The Playa’ and the Cool Pose: Gender and
Relationship Violence 151
6 Conclusions and Recommendations 191
Appendix: Study Participants 223
Notes 225
References 265
Index 285
About the Author 292
vii

Foreword
Ruth D. Peterson
In Getting Played, Jody Miller has once again offered up an
eye-opening investigation of young women’s lives and vulnerabilities. In
her earlier book, One of the Guys, she enlightened us about fundamen-
tal processes related to girls’ entry into and participation in gangs. This
time, the subjects of Miller’s research are perhaps the most understudied
population in the field of criminology: African American girls, more
specifically African American girls who reside in one of the poorest sec-
tions of St. Louis, Missouri. When such girls are the focus of crimino-
logical research, it is usually from the point of view of explaining their
participation in delinquency or other problematic behaviors. Getting
Played takes a decidedly different approach. Here, Miller focuses on
girls’ victimization and the embeddedness of such victimization in the
everyday lives of these youths, with all that this means for discovering
and bringing the reader face to face with a host of unpleasant realities.
These critical choices (of topic and population) take us to a story of
how intersections of gender, race, class, and place are at the center of
girls’ lives and experiences.
First, and most notably, Miller grabs readers’ attention with the stark
reality of the widespread occurrence of violent victimization among the
girls she studies. Such violence ranges from what some would regard as
mild forms of harassment (sexual and gender-based) to striking and
heart-wrenching incidents of gang rape and repeated violent assaults.
Indeed, one is hard-pressed at times to contain tears and felt-rage in the
wake of descriptions of the worst cases of the violence perpetrated
against young women. Such victimizations seem even sadder because
they come at the hands of boys (and men) who are“friends” and family
Ruth D. Peterson is Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Science at The Ohio
State University, Columbus, Ohio.
ix