Confronting race and racism : social identity in African American gay men.

Kudler, Benjamin A (2007). Confronting race and racism : social identity in African American gay men. Thesis (M.S.W.) Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass. Abstract, Download Page. PDF, Full Text.

This qualitative study examines how race and racism function in gay communities, looking at factors facing African American gay men in their identity formation and daily experience. Specifically, this study has examined the presence of sexual racism, sexualized racial stereotypes that affect the way men of color are viewed by white gay men... African American gay men, often considered to be cultural outlaws by both Gay and African American communities, are subjected to sexual and traditional racism, and may be made to feel ignored or excluded from mainstream Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community events and spaces. In addition to stating their challenges, the study attempts to highlight these men’s strength and resiliency... The majority of participants were highly educated and middle- to upper-middle class, which is a skewed representation of the greater African-American gay population in Boston... In participant’s experiences, the color of their skin comes first in the context of gay communities, which tend to be predominately white. Participants felt separated, stratified, made to feel “less” than their white peers, and/or were sexualized because of their race, with many assumptions put upon them because of their skin color... Another manifestation of racism in gay communities has to do with the expectation of African American gay men to hold to stereotypical roles derived from a long history of stereotypes around African American masculinity, and more recently, from hip-hop culture... Participant’s discussion of the Down Low will be addressed later in the chapter. However, participants had a lot to say about the specific assumptions that white men placed on them based on their race and sexualized racial stereotypes, often tied to the Mandingo fantasy of African American men as hyper-sexual predators with huge penises, animalistic aggression, and low intelligence (McBride, 2005; Stevenson, 1994). Several participants said that relative strangers and intimate partners had used the phrase or even referred to them as “big black dick.”