“Crime is a Social Construction”

In researching a serial killer, I examine how Black power responds to crime.

A map of the wards within Little Rock. Each ward has a director appointed to form a legislative branch for the city’s government. The Little Rock Slasher is active in Ward 1. Source: City of Little Rock.

When I write, I center Black personhood. I want to write about the stories, decisions, emotions, fashion, institutions, myths, legends, and truths that allow my people to love, live, and persist in the West.

In this story I am currently writing about the Little Rock Slasher, I realized that the sensationalism surrounding the serial killer is a white response. I realized I had to do more research into the political structure of the city and its police to get to the Black story.

Because Black people are not sensationalizing the killer. Instead, we are using it as an opportunity to discuss power structures in the city.

Black personhood understands that crime is a social construction. The crook emerges in opposition to whatever laws government passes and enforces. The weed dealer is only a crook because weed is illegal; white people are now changing laws to make weed dealers entrepreneurs.

I’m applying this attitude toward the Slasher. What policies allowed him to emerge and kill undetected? Why did it take him killing two white people and attacking a third for it to become sensationalized? What about his latest, Black victim?