Recalling Persky: White Rage and Intimate Publicity After Brock Turner

By attending to the successful campaign to recall and unseat Judge Aaron Persky in retaliation for his sentencing decision in the sexual assault trial of Stanford University athlete Brock Turner, we argue that the campaign constituted a White intimate public that directed White rage toward the judge for his perceived betrayals of a White paternal social contract. Because the campaign posited Persky’s willingness to inflict carceral violence upon Turner as the measure of his fidelity to the state’s obligations with regard to sexual violence and equality under the law, it legitimized carceral solutions that disproportionately harm communities of color. Such a centering of carceral solutions betrayed the public’s affective divestment from the needs of marginalized communities.