Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) shameless ogling of the opposite sex.

1969		R.D. Pharr Book of Numbers 15: Reckless eyeballing, they calls it. And you’re guilty as all get-out yourself.
1981		in A. Karanikas Hellenes and Hellions 366: In the South [...] they call it reckless eyeballing, and you can get thirty days for it. Ten years if you’re a nigger.
1986		I. Reed [bk title] Reckless Eyeballing.
1999		Guardian 25 Feb. 🌐 In the American Deep South they used to call it reckless eyeballing – the accusation that a black man dared look a white woman in the eye.
2005		R. Bruns Jesse Jackson 10: One policeman, Jesse said, became infamous for locking up a black man for ‘reckless eyeballing’ a white woman from feet away.
2015		P. Beatty Sellout (2016) 175: ‘Dad, what are we doing here?’ ‘We’re reckless eyeballing [...] And I do mean reckless’ [...] I knew that ‘reckless eyeballing’ was the act of a black male deigning to look at a southern white female.