New Brunswick, N.J. (April 1, 2019) – The rapper Cardi B’s admission that she drugged and robbed men looking for sex during her time as a stripper reflects an age-old crime practiced by “badger thieves,” according to a Rutgers University–New Brunswick scholar.
“Newspaper accounts from the late 19th century refer to ‘badger thieves’ – poor, mostly black women who would pose as prostitutes, lure men into alleys, then knock them unconscious and steal their belongings,” said Kali Nicole Gross, a Martin Luther King, Jr., professor of history who researches the incarceration of black women in America. “These were risky, brutal crimes committed by women who, from all available evidence, were struggling to survive as Cardi B says she was when she committed her equally brutal robberies.”
“The badger thieves of the 1880s knew how to work the criminal justice system,” she said. “They knew that white male victims were unlikely to go to the police – and that the few who did would face judges more interested in making an example of the victims for wanting to cavort with black prostitutes. The women would often go free. It’s interesting to note that Cardi B says working as an exotic dancer saved her from a life of poverty and domestic violence and allowed her to get an education. The violence these women experienced is certainly bound up in the crimes they chose to commit.”
Gross can be reached at [email protected].
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