Intersectional Identity in Stop-and-Frisk Decisions

Sor Juana understood how her multiple marginalizations—gender, race, class—intersected to shape her treatment by institutions. She refused to reduce herself to a single category. In policing, intersectionality explains why Black women experience police violence differently than white women or Black men; why immigrant youth face compounded scrutiny based on race and immigration status; why LGBTQ+ people of color navigate policing with particular vulnerability. Officers trained in intersectional thinking recognize that a person cannot be understood through a single characteristic, yet biased stops often rely on reductive profiling. Sor Juana's insistence on full humanity and complexity mirrors the demand that policing practices account for the complete identities of those encountered. This prevents the flattening of people into stereotypes that enables discriminatory enforcement.