“i am a house swollen with the dead”: Seroconversion, Disenfranchised Grief, and Heterotopic Deixis in Danez Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead

African American Gay Men

In this study of Black gay and bisexual men in Toronto, sexually active survey participants reported on their sexual behaviours with male partners of different ethnoracial backgrounds, and interview participants reflected on how their sexual relationships emerged in the context of race and interracial desire. Most survey participants reported sexual relationships with other Black men. Participants were more likely to be insertive with White and other ethnoracial men than with Black men. A significant number of participants who were receptive or versatile with Black partners switched to the insertive role when their sexual partners were not Black. Interview participants ascribed a sense of fulfilment to their sexual relationships with other Black men, but avoided relationships with White men or interpreted such relationships as either purely sexual and/or inflected by their racialised objectification. Others avoided sexual relationships with other Black men or preferred relationships with White men, sometimes in opposition to experiences of oppressive masculinity from some Black partners but mindful of the possibility of racialised encounters with their White partners. Study participants emerge as informed sexual subjects, self-conscious about their sexual relationships and variously inclined to negotiate or resist racialisation and oppression in the private and public spheres.

Black gay and bisexual older men face numerous barriers across the life course that can contribute to negative health and well-being as they age. Drawing on strengths-based social determinants discussed in the health literature and literature on intersectionality, justice, and critical consciousness, this study examines qualitative data from seventeen Black gay and bisexual older men about sources and strategies of resilience and thriving amidst intersecting systems of power and oppression that shape health inequities. The findings revealed an evolution of positive support networks across their life courses, including biological family and families of choice such as “houses” and support groups. Early and ongoing negative experiences relating to intersecting positionalities (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation) also provided sources of strength and resilience. Participants identified three strategies for building resilience and thriving: naming external ignorance, acknowledging common struggles, and reconciling contradictions. These strategies reflected various levels of critical consciousness that helped them navigate complex and intersecting systems of power that they encountered as Black gay men across the life course. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of considering intersecting systems of power and critical consciousness when examining resilience and social determinants of health and contribute new insights on a vastly understudied population.

Using findings from a qualitative investigation based on in-depth email interviews with 47 Black and South Asian gay men in Britain, this paper explores the cross-cutting identities and discourses in relation to being both gay and from an ethnic minority background. Taking an intersectional approach, detailed accounts of identity negotiation, cultural pressures, experiences of discrimination and exclusion and the relationship between minority ethnic gay men and mainstream White gay culture are presented and explored. The major findings common to both groups were: cultural barriers limiting disclosure of sexuality to family and wider social networks; experiences of discrimination by White gay men that included exclusion as well as objectification; a lack of positive gay role models and imagery relating to men from minority ethnic backgrounds. Among South Asian gay men, a major theme was regret at being unable to fulfil family expectations regarding marriage and children, while among Black gay men, there was a strong belief that same-sex behaviour subverted cultural notions related to how masculinity is configured. The paper concludes by highlighting the importance of social location, particularly education and income, when examining the intersection of ethnicity and sexuality in future research.

Making Sweet Tea

A Taste for Brown Bodies: Gay Modernity and Cosmopolitan DesireNot Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis

In Canada, there is a paucity of research aimed at understanding Black gay men and the antecedents to risk factors for HIV. This study is an attempt to move beyond risk factor analysis and explore the role of sexual and ethnic communities in the lives of these men. The study utilized a community-based research and critical race theory approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight key informants to augment our understanding of Black gay men and to facilitate recruitment of participants. In-depth interviews were done with 24 Black gay men. Our data showed that the construction of community for Black gay men is challenged by their social and cultural environment. However, these men use their resilience to navigate gay social networks. Black gay men expressed a sense of abjuration from both gay and Black communities because of homophobia and racism. It is essential for health and social programmers to understand how Black gay men interact with Black and gay communities and the complexities of their interactions in creating outreach educational, preventive and support services.

An intersectional approach to examine sleep duration in sexual minority adults in the United States: findings from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System

This chapter describes the work of Blacks Educating Blacks about Sexual Health Issues (BEBASHI), one of the country’s first Black AIDS organizations, under the leadership of Rashidah Hassan, a Black Muslim nurse. Hassan confronted racism within existing AIDS agencies, which were predominantly made up of white gay men, and maintained that Black gay and bisexual men could be reached only by canvassing Black neighborhoods outside of the downtown core, which was home to the mostly white “gayborhood.” This approach, she argued, additionally would help prevent AIDS among the straight Black men, women, and youth who were also shown to be at increased risk of the disease. But this approach also drew accusations of homophobia and hurt the group’s credibility with the Black gay men who were among the most at risk.

The research on which this study reports was informed by the following questions: Do Black gay men identify more closely with a racial identity or with a sexual identity? What experiences influence the saliency of a racial or sexual identity for Black gay men? How do Black gay men use daily interactions to inform a sense of self? Essentially, how do Black gay men negotiate stigmatized identities? Based on 50 in-depth interviews with self-identified Black gay men, the author highlights three emergent models of identity negotiations: interlocking identities, up–down identities, and public–private identities. Identifying the strategies Black gay men use to understand both themselves and the larger Black and gay communities helps illuminate the diversity within those communities and highlights the ways in which individuals who find themselves at the intersections of racial and sexual stigma understand themselves and the larger communities to which they belong.

While I was growing up, conversations about homosexual relationships were a taboo subject for as long as I can remember. It is a subject that burns deep within the heart and soul of the United States. For years, some DL and Black gay men have struggled to understand the Black community’s objection to the union of homosexual relationships. The term “DL,” which is short for “on the down low,” is a common way to refer to Black men who live their everyday lives in the guise of heterosexuals, are often married to women, yet also engage in discreet relationships with other men. This first-person narrative focuses on a time when I was employed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in New York City. I reflect on some of my interactions with DL and Black gay men. I discuss how some Black men who identify as gay are oftentimes hesitant to adopt the label “queer,” and to some extent even “gay,” due to the association of these terms with whiteness. This article is Part 1 in a series of two, both published in the same issue of Visual Arts Research. It is in direct conversation with the second article, “What It Means to Be Black: DL, Black, and Black Gay Male Images in Media—A Television Criticism. “ It is my intention to start this journey with “Learning to Be Black: Unreconciled Strivings of DL and Black Gay Male Identity” and end with an echoing negativity about how images of Black men are viewed and perceived in social media through a television criticism. These two articles are companion pieces, which feed off each other and rhythmically flow into a cohesive union of these most poignant and pressing topics of being DL, Black, and a gay man in the United States.The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. —W. E. B. Du Bois (1903)

The author uses an intersectionality framework to examine how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people evaluate the severity of their violent experiences. Previous research focusing on the severity of anti-LGBT violence has given relatively little attention to race, class, and gender as systems of power. In contrast, results from this study, based on 47 semi-structured, in-depth interviews, reveal that Black and Latino/Latina respondents often perceived anti-queer violence as implying that they had negatively represented their racial communities, whereas white respondents typically overlooked the racialized implications of their violent experiences. Furthermore, while lesbians of color emphasized their autonomy and self-sufficiency to challenge this discourse, Black and Latino gay men underscored their emotional and physical strength to undermine perceptions that they were weak for identifying as gay. Results also indicate that LGBT people experience forms of anti-queer violence in different ways depending on their social position, as Black lesbians faced discourse that neither white lesbians nor Black gay men were likely to confront. Thus, these findings suggest that topics primarily associated with homophobia should be examined through an intersectional lens.

Black gay and bisexual men aged 15–29 are disproportionately represented among new cases of HIV in the USA. Researchers have argued that community-based prevention cannot succeed without the participation of faith-based organisations, particularly given the salience of religion and spirituality in the lives of young Black gay and bisexual men. Yet some Black churches may be hesitant to engage in HIV prevention efforts given their beliefs about same-sex behaviour. It is less clear, however, whether and how public health practitioners in the field of HIV prevention have approached church inclusion. We therefore explored how community stakeholders describe the involvement of Black churches with the HIV continuum of care. We draw on a qualitative dataset of 50 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted in Detroit, USA. Participants offered multiple perspectives on the response of Black churches to the HIV epidemic, from overt stigma to gradual acceptance and action. Nevertheless, participants agreed that when stigma was present in the pews and the pulpit, young Black gay and bisexual men were at potential risk of social isolation. Furthermore, tensions may exist between Black churches and secular community-based organisations that are attributable to histories of mistrust. These findings have important implications for future community-based intervention strategies among young Black gay and bisexual men.

Gay black men, a thriving subculture of the black and gay communities, are doubly marginalized. Along with other black men, they are typically portrayed in the media and literature as 'street corner men' - unemployed drifters, absentee fathers, substance abusers. In the larger gay community, they are an invisible minority. One of the Children, the first formal cultural study of gay black men in Harlem, not only illuminates this segment of America's gay population but presents a far richer, more diverse portrait of black men's lives than is commonly perceived. Based on two years' intensive research - during which the author lived in Harlem's gay community - including extensive interviews with fifty-seven community members, this book depicts gay black men's lives in all their social, economic, and cultural complexity.William Hawkeswood takes us from the street into the homes and lives of his subjects. He describes the elaborate network of friends, called 'family', that supports these men emotionally and financially, and the community's two-tiered economic structure, comprising gay men and 'boys', or hustlers. Hawkeswood also explores what it means for these men to be both gay and black. In the process, he makes the surprising discovery that while the AIDS virus looms all around them, it has not yet significantly affected the community of gay blacks who choose their sexual partners exclusively from among Harlem's other gay black men.

At turns autobiographical, political, literary, erotic, and humorous, Black Gay Man will spoil our preconceived notions of not only what it means to be black, gay and male but also what it means to be a contemporary intellectual. Both a celebration of black gay male identity as well as a powerful critique of the structures that allow for the production of that identity, Black Gay Man introduces the eloquent new voice of Robert Reid-Pharr in cultural criticism. At once erudite and readable, the range of topics and positions taken up in Black Gay Man reflect the complexity of American life itself. Treating subjects as diverse as the Million Man March, interracial sex, anti-Semitism, turn of the century American intellectualism as well as literary and cultural figures ranging from Essex Hemphill and Audre Lorde to W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin, Black Gay Man is a bold and nuanced attempt to question prevailing ideas about community, desire, politics and culture. Moving beyond critique, Reid-Pharr also pronounces upon the promises of a new America. With the publication of Black Gay Man, Robert Reid-Pharr is sure to take his place as one of this country's most exciting and challenging left intellectuals.