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| Lily Cusiel. Image © Megathon Artworks |
door Stacey Patton
Following
the report, which the CDC later admitted was misleading, several black scholars
and scientists spoke up about the way medical research is conducted on
African-Americans. Too much research, they said, focuses on clinics in poor,
urban areas where people are more likely to use drugs or have sexually
transmitted diseases. The data from those populations, they said, cannot be
used to form generalizations about all black people—or about black versus white
people.
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| Amber Rose |
Velma M.
Murry, a sociologist at Vanderbilt University whose research is on the black
middle class, has found evidence that contradicts national reports about
sexually transmitted diseases among blacks. She has noted that middle-class
African-American girls delay having sex two years beyond the national average
for all girls. What is missed is "the positive practices of black
families—the practices that work for us, that lead to better physical and
psychological health."
In
sociology, public policy, and public health, scholars have been pushing
researchers to look up from diagrams and charts of health statistics to develop
studies that speak to the people being studied, rather than to the assumptions
and the culture of the researchers who produce the studies.
For
example, Northwestern's Watkins-Hayes has explored the economic and
social-survival strategies of women living with HIV and AIDS in the Chicago
area. Seeing that much of the news-media focus and LGBT activism involve white
communities, Mignon R. Moore, a sociologist at UCLA, sought to gather
information by following more than 100 middle-class and working-class black
lesbians for three years to provide insights into how black culture helps shape
their identities and family formation. Leon E. Pettiway, a professor emeritus
in the department of criminal justice at Indiana University at Bloomington, has
moved beyond statistics on street crime with his 1996 book, Honey, Honey,
Miss Thang, a poignant look at five gay, drug-using transvestites who struggled
to retain some sense of dignity in the face of substance abuse and hustling to
stay alive.
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Surinamese singer Damaru, having fun with a female
fan in the VIP lounge of Pengel International Airport
before his departure |
Old taboos
are falling. After all, the country now has a black president who has declared
his support for same-sex marriage. Exploring lived sexuality, recognizing the black
sexual experience in all its diversity—including pimps, prostitutes,
transsexuals, and porn stars—is freeing intellectual debate from old fears and
inhibitions. But scholars say it's not just a matter of widening their research
agenda. It means bringing the insights about black history and culture, about
the structures of racism and pathology, into public-health discussions of AIDS,
drugs, prison conditions, and molested children.
These
scholars say it's a matter of saving lives.
Stacey
Patton is a staff reporter at The Chronicle. She holds a Ph.D. in
history from Rutgers University at New Brunswick and is the author of That Mean
Old Yesterday (Simon & Schuster, 2007), a memoir about growing up in
foster care and the historical roots of corporal punishment in African-American
families.
Corrections
(12/3/2012, 10:17 a.m.). Because of an editing error, this article
originally misreported Leon E. Pettiway's institution. He is at Indiana
University at Bloomington, not at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. And
Darieck Scott is a member of the department of African-American studies at the
University of California at Berkeley, not the department of African studies.
Key Books
in Black Sexuality Studies
Honey,
Honey, Miss Thang: Being Black, Gay, and on the Streets, by Leon E.
Pettiway (Temple University Press, 1996)
The
Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics, by
Cathy J. Cohen (University of Chicago Press, 1999)
Queering
the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture, by
Siobhan B. Somerville (Duke University Press, 2000)
Traps:
African American Men on Gender and Sexuality, edited by Rudolph P. Byrd
and Beverly Guy-Sheftall (Indiana University Press, 2001)
Longing to
Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy, by Tricia Rose
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003)
Black Queer
Studies: A Critical Anthology, edited by E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G.
Henderson (Duke University Press, 2005)
Why I Hate
Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality, by Dwight A.
McBride (New York University Press, 2005)
Exploring
Black Sexuality, by Robert Staples (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)
Black
Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism, by
Patricia Hill Collins (Routledge, 2004)
Once You Go
Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual, by Robert
Reid-Pharr (New York University Press, 2007)
Private
Lives, Proper Relations: Regulating Black Intimacy, by Candice M. Jenkins
(University of Minnesota Press, 2007)
Blackness
and Sexualities, edited by Michelle M. Wright and Antje Schuhmann (LIT
Verlag, 2007)
Sweet Tea:
Black Gay Men of the South, by E. Patrick Johnson (University of North
Carolina Press, 2008)
Bulldaggers,
Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race and Sexuality in the Harlem
Renaissance, by James F. Wilson (University of Michigan Press, 2010)
¡Venceremos?:
The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba, by Jafari S. Allen (Duke
University Press, 2011)
Invisible
Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood Among Black Women, by
Mignon R. Moore (University of California Press, 2011)
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| Erotica by Erwin de Vries (Slotervaart, Amsterdam) |
