Race and Sexuality (original) (raw)
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Structural Racism and the Intersection of Race and Sexuality: A Critical Review
The sociological concept of structural racism has made a significant contribution to our understanding of how race operates in American society, and how race relations are produced within a racialized social system. One of the ways in which structural racism can help uncover social processes by which race is produced is to use a lens of structural racism to understand the intersection of race and sexuality in American culture. A great deal of work has been done by social scientists to understand how race operates in culture, and a great deal of work has been done by social scientists to understand the domain of sexuality in society. However, far less work has been done to integrate the two fields of inquiry to understand how race and sexuality are related to each another and how they produce each other through social relationships and the structure of society. This paper undertakes a critical review of the scholarly literature on the intersection of race and sexuality in American culture, with specific emphasis on the intersection of race and sexuality within groups of men who have sex with men (MSM). The review aims to explain how race and sexuality are shown to intersect within American culture, which has structural racism as a central organizing feature. The review also aims to identify gaps that exist in the literature that explores the intersection of race and sexuality within groups of individuals who balance multiple forms of minority identity, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities of color. The review ultimately has the goal of setting an agenda for future research into this area of scholarly inquiry.
The ground upon which we stand: Reading sexuality through race
Lesbian and Gay Psychology Review
In this paper I outline some of my own practices for teaching sexuality in tertiary education in Australia, and I suggest that one approach to teaching in this context requires non-indigenous educators to locate ourselves and our students within a relationship to ongoing histories of colonisation and the fact of Indigenous sovereignty. I also suggest that teaching about the intersections of multiple identity positions requires educators to incorporate specific pedagogies that render visible social norms, and which highlight the relationship between privilege and disadvantage. Finally, I outline the possible benefits of coming out in the classroom on multiple levels, and suggest that coming out as a white queer educator can assist in modelling forms of engagement for dominant group students that account for their social location.
A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality
Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1998
Since the mid-1980s, scholarship and college courses that address multiple dimensions of inequality under the rubric of race, class, gender, and (recently) sexuality studies have grown rapidly. Most courses now employ a set of readings, many of which are drawn from a growing number of anthologies. A strength of this approach is its presentation of the diversity of human experiences and the multiplicity of critical perspectives. A weakness is its failure to convey the commonalities in race, class, gender, and sexuality analyses of social reality. To aid in teaching and research on race, class, gender, and sexuality, this article presents six common themes that characterize this scholarship. Race, class, gender, and sexuality are historically and globally specific, socially constructed power relations that simultaneously operate at both the macro (societal) and micro (individual) levels of society. Scholarship in this tradition emphasizes the interdependence of knowledge and activism.
The Crossroads of Race and Sexuality
Journal of Family Issues, 2003
The authors examine 2,400 personal ads from male advertisers collected from the Internet, focusing on issues of race and sexual orientation. They look at advertisers' desire for a partner of a particular race and the effect of their race and sexual orientation on their choices. The data indicate that Black, Hispanic, and Asian men are more likely than White men to have a race preference for a partner. Additionally, gay men are more likely to mention race than straight men. However, gay Black men and gay Hispanic men are less likely to have a race preference. The authors explain the differences in terms of race sensitivity and how preferences reflect the current racial hierarchy.
For online access go to http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjis20/33/3 Across various times, spaces and struggles the papers brought together in this special issue share a critical perspective on the relationship between sexuality, the nation and the global. Informed by postcolonial and transnational feminist thought, the contributions tackle the critical role played by processes of racializing sexualities in maintaining local and global hierarchies and attend to the contradictory workings of hegemonic discourses of Western modernity. The questions addressed in the articles reflect three major tendencies of recent research on sexuality: a renewed interest in wider socioeconomic structures and global capitalism; an explicit focus on the interplay between race, nation, (neo)imperialism and sexuality; and a growth of interest in the state. The special issue aims to create a space of critical reflection and emancipatory knowledge production that not only renders differentiated analyses but also tools for struggles to confront racialized sexualities.