African American Gay Research Articles

Queer Affect at Work

Early on in her often moving new book, Queer Career, Margot Canaday quotes from an oral history interview she conducted in New York in 2012, at the very beginning of her research. The participant, an African American gay man, recalled his entry into the working world: “I was a typist, and I wanted to type.” The sentence provides early evidence for one of the major findings of the book, that before gay liberation, many queer and trans people chose lower-paying jobs in office and service work because it allowed for greater flexibility to pursue a sexual and social life outside of their job, and because there was less to lose if you were arrested. But Canaday also slows down to parse not just the speaker's words but also his intonation. As Canaday recalls, “[H]e didn't just state this; he joyfully exclaimed it: ‘I was a typist,’ his voice rose, ‘and I wanted to type!’” (19).

HIV Testing Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic - United States, 2019-2020.

HIV testing is a core strategy for the Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. (EHE) initiative, which has the aim of reducing new HIV infections by at least 90% by 2030.* During 2016-2017, jurisdictions with the highest HIV diagnosis rates were those with higher prevalences of HIV testing; past-year HIV testing was higher among persons who reported recent HIV risk behaviors compared with those who did not report these risks (1). During 2020-2021, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted health care delivery, including HIV testing in part because many persons avoided services to comply with COVID-19 risk mitigation efforts (2). In addition, public health departments redirected some sexual health services to COVID-19-related activities.† CDC analyzed data from four national data collection systems to assess the numbers of HIV tests performed and HIV infections diagnosed in the United States in the years before (2019) and during (2020) the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, HIV diagnoses reported to CDC decreased by 17% compared with those reported in 2019. This decrease was preceded by decreases in HIV testing during the same period, particularly among priority populations including Black or African American (Black) gay men, Hispanic or Latino (Hispanic) gay men, bisexual men, other men who have sex with men (MSM), and transgender persons in CDC-funded jurisdictions. To compensate for testing and diagnoses missed during the COVID-19 pandemic and to accelerate the EHE initiative, CDC encourages partnerships among federal organizations, state and local health departments, community-based organizations, and health care systems to increase access to HIV testing services, including strategies such as self-testing and routine opt-out screening in health care settings.

African American Gay Men

African American Gay Men

An Archival Framework for Affirming Black Women’s Bisexual Rhetorics in the Primus Collections

ABSTRACT Bisexual discourse is underexamined as such within rhetoric. So too are the historical practices of African American lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer+ (LGBTQ+) communities. Responding to these forms of erasure, my essay advances the study of Black women’s bisexual rhetorics through a focus on the collected papers of a freeborn African American woman, Rebecca Primus (1836–1932). Specifically, the essay offers a comparative analysis of two archival collections containing letters to her: the widely studied Primus Family Papers and the more recently acquired Rebecca Primus Papers. Taken together, these collections offer an enlarged view of Rebecca’s epistolary relationships with people of more than one gender. In doing so, I argue, the new collection reveals a need for a bisexual archival framework, which redresses the limitations of any single collection of romantic letters as a necessarily partial and speculative source of information. This framework affirms Black women’s bisexual rhetorics while recovering a more diverse LGBTQ+ past.

Speculating on Jim Crow Queerness in African American Lesbian and Gay Life Writing

Speculating on Jim Crow Queerness in African American Lesbian and Gay Life Writing

Current behavioral, socioeconomic and demographic determinants of lifetime HIV testing among African Americans in the deep south

Objective: The Southern region of the United States (US) experiences higher HIV related disparities, majority of new HIV infections are transmitted by individuals who are unaware of their status. African Americans constitute 44% of HIV diagnosis in the US, and African American gay and bisexual men accounted for the largest number of new HIV diagnosis in 2016. Methods: Data from nine southern states in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) 2016 was analyzed using logistic regression.Results: We found Individuals less likely to test for HIV included: heterosexuals, married individuals, living in a nonMetropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), others (retirees, students and homemakers), older than 65 years and/or with less than high school education.Conclusion: Amid finite resources, interventions for HIV testing among African Americans should focus more on theseindividuals who are less likely to be aware of their HIV status, further contributing to new HIV infections.

Informal support experiences of older African-American gay men living with HIV/AIDS

ABSTRACTIn lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) scholarship, there is paucity in empirical literature documenting the specific ways in which HIV-positive African-American gay men and lesbian women seek social support from caregivers, family, friends, and intimate partners. We know minimal information about how older African-American HIV-positive gay men negotiate intersections of race, age, and sexuality to gain access to informal social support. The purpose of this study was to explore and understand the informal social support experiences among African-American gay men that are 50 years old and older living with HIV/AIDS. A qualitative hermeneutic phenomenology data collection process included the in-depth, face-to-face interviews of 12 African-American males, ages 50 and over, diagnosed with HIV/AIDS from agencies that provided services to HIV/AIDS populations. Upon completion of data collection and transcription, the data were extracted, organized, and analyzed. Due to their multiple positions in society, older African-American gay men living with HIV/AIDS had fashioned a fragile system of support captured a loss of informal social support and relied mostly on formal social supports. From a macro implications perspective, interdisciplinary teams can help build an inclusive systematic environment for older African-American gay men living with HIV/AIDS.

On the Battlefield: The Black Church, Public Health, and the Fight against HIV among African American Gay and Bisexual Men.

HIV affects African American gay and bisexual men (AAGBM) more disproportionately than any other group in the USA. The Black Church, which has been a historic mainstay for African American empowerment and well-being, has the potential to be a public health partner for HIV prevention with AAGBM. Public health partnerships with the Black Church can strengthen HIV prevention efforts with AAGBM by [1] adapting church-based prevention strategies developed for other African American subgroups [2], providing prevention and referral services [3], considering how scripture supports prevention efforts, and [4] emphasizing the tenets of liberation theology. Public health should consider how thoughtful engagement, research, and interventions can support these approaches. Developing partnerships with the Black Church and African American clergy can promote effective HIV prevention efforts for AAGBM.

Feasibility of Ecological Momentary Assessment of Daily Sexting and Substance Use Among Young Adult African American Gay and Bisexual Men: A Pilot Study.

BackgroundRecent evidence suggests that sexualized text communication (“sexting”) is associated with substance use and sexual risk behaviors among young adults, yet little is known about this relationship among young adult African American gay and bisexual men, a population disproportionately impacted by HIV in the United States. Rapid advances in mobile phone technology indicate a clear need for research using mobile health (mHealth) methods such as ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to serve as a viable counterpart to retrospective evaluation methods by using real-time data collection to assess sexting and substance use among this population.ObjectiveThe objective of this pilot study was to (1) describe the EMA study design and protocol, (2) characterize the study population, and (3) assess the feasibility of a random prompt text message-based thrice-daily EMA over 14 days, as a means of prospectively studying sexting, marijuana, and alcohol use among a sample of young adult African American gay and bisexual men ages 21 to 25.MethodsParticipants were recruited through flyers and snowball sampling during spring and summer 2015 at a community-based HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and support organization in Washington, DC. Eligible participants were enrolled in a one-time in-person study visit that consisted of informed written consent to participate in the study, a self-administered survey, a semi-structured interview, and enrollment and training in EMA data collection. Commencing the day after the study visit, a random prompt survey was texted to participants on their personal mobile phones 3 times a day over a 14-day data collection period assessing mood, texts sent, texts received, sexts sent, sexts received, marijuana want, marijuana use, and alcohol use.ResultsEMA feasibility was tested with 25 self-identified African American gay (n=16) and bisexual (n=9) men (mean age of 23.48 years, SD 1.5). Each random prompt survey had 8 questions with responses including yes/no and Likert scale options. There were 104 total days of EMA observation, and the retention rate was 72% (18 out of 25 participants). Participants responded to the random prompt surveys with a 57.3% compliance rate providing a total of 544 completed surveys out of 949 surveys. The overall mean response time to complete a survey was 6.1 minutes. There were significant positive associations between EMA texts sent and received questions (ρ 0.84, P<.001) as well as sexts sent and received queries (ρ 0.72, P<.001).ConclusionsThe use of an EMA protocol has the potential to be a very useful research tool for understanding episodic behaviors such as sexting and substance use in this relatively understudied and underserved population, and has implications for practice. Additional research is needed on how to maximize survey compliance.

“It Really Is Not Just Gay, but African American Gay”: The Impact of Community and Church on the Experiences of Black Lesbians Living in North Central Florida

ABSTRACTThe experiences of Black lesbians highlight the unique circumstance found at the intersection of sexuality, race, and gender. However, most sexuality research tends to focus on White lesbians and White gay men, and most race research tends to focus on Black heterosexuals. Furthermore, research on the Black gay community tends to focus on those living in the Northeast or on the West Coast, neglecting experiences of those living in the more politically, socially, and religiously conservative South. This article draws on data obtained from semistructured interviews with 12 Black lesbians living in north central Florida, exploring their perspectives as they negotiate a social world of intersecting oppressions. Participants especially highlight how they contextualized their sexuality in racialized terms and negotiated it in racially defined communities.

An Integrated Model of Safer Sex Practices among African-American Gay and Bisexual Men

Models of safer sex enable researchers to identify specific constructs that can be used to promote health behavior and are more effective than interventions without a theoretical base. This study tested basic and modified forms of the Theory of Reasoned Action and Information Motivation Behavioral Skills models among 151 African American gay/bisexual men. Gay socialization was added to an integrated model to see if this minority-specific contextual variable would improve the model. Self-efficacy was tested as an independent variable and a mediating variable. The results suggest that an integrated model of safer sex practices should include benefits/barriers to condom use, social norm perceptions, sexual assertiveness, and self-efficacy (as a mediating variable). Gay socialization did not improve the model statistically but may influence safer sex behavior conceptually and pragmatically.

Gay Families: Challenging Racial and Sexual/Gender Minority Stressors through Social Support

In the Southern United States, gay family is a term given to constructed social networks formed by mostly African American gay and transgender adolescents and adults in the face of marginalization and rejection from their biological families and religious communities. The current research initiates the study of these fictive kinship structures, in which older members assume parental roles to somewhat younger members. The current grounded theory qualitative study examined the experience of gay family members in the Mid-South region, with a focus on how these families are structured and serve to support their members. Results revealed that, overall, these networks used methods of coping consistent with African American cultural values to find acceptance and guidance and bolster resilience in the face of racism, heterosexism, and transphobia. Community norms tended to support and celebrate gender flexibility in family roles as well as creative gendered performances in family competitions. Methods of coping within gay families could result in unhealthy coping strategies (e.g., drug use) to withstand extreme social and economic stressors but also in a sense of personal growth, interpersonal responsibility, and both personal and community pride. The implications of these findings for minority stress theory and for gender theory are discussed.

African American Gay Family Networks: An Entry Point for HIV Prevention

Gay families are constructed support networks that gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals of color form, often in response to societal marginalization and rejection from biological families. Research on these family structures has been scarce, with little focus on the experience of African American gay family networks in the South. The current grounded theory qualitative study focused on the experiences of 10 African American male and transgender individuals between the ages of 18 and 29 from gay families in the Mid-South, and explored the ways these families addressed safe-sex issues and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) risk prevention. Results revealed that families can play a role in either increasing HIV risk (e.g., ignoring HIV issues, encouraging such unsafe behaviors as exchanging sex for money or drugs, stigmatizing HIV-positive people) or decreasing it (e.g., intensive, family-level prevention efforts at safe-sex practices and family support for HIV treatment adherence). The potential of these family networks for HIV prevention and adherence efforts is considered.

Emotional Memories Stemming From a Crisis: A Snapshot of AIDS Activism in Washington, DC (1981–1986)

Emotional memories—described in this article as conscious, protracted memories that reference emotional events from the past—provide powerful qualitative data for social analysts. The reconfigured concept “emotional memories,” a neuroscientific term, is utilized to help describe the long-term effects of affective, historically situated marginalization. The author highlights emotional memories of African American lesbian, gay, and bisexual activists involved in the early years of the AIDS crisis in Washington, DC, and connects these memories to documentation in the archives, which illuminate the source and power of these emotions. The author additionally uses an interdisciplinary lens to sociologically understand collective, yet individual, emotional responses to an epidemic.

Queer Encounters in the Music of Billy Strayhorn

AbstractThis article addresses issues of queer identity, aesthetics, and history in jazz through a focus on two midcentury works composed and/or arranged by Billy Strayhorn: a set of four pieces written in 1953 for an Off-Broadway production of Federico García-Lorca's The Love of Don Perlimplín for Belisa in Their Garden (Amor de Don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín); and several movements from the Strayhorn-Ellington adaptation of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite (1960). My study considers how the two works engage artistic figures, themes, topics, and aesthetic practices that have strong queer historical affiliations. These include failed or impossible love, masking, stylized exotica, and other liminal spheres of identificatory ambiguity and reversal. Taken together, these works enable a positioning of Strayhorn within modernist queer cultural history and, more specifically, within the history of African American gay cultural production. At the same time, through showing how queerness inhabits jazz's past, my analyses of Strayhorn's queer musical encounters provide a critical vantage point from which to examine historical and cultural understandings of jazz at midcentury and, more broadly, the complex relationships between social identities (race, sexuality, gender) and composition, arrangement, and collaboration in twentieth-century music.

Comparison of strategies to increase HIV testing among African-American gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men in Washington, DC

This paper presents results from a study conducted to compare the relative effectiveness of three strategies – alternate venue testing (AVT), the social network strategy (SNS), and partner counseling and referral services (PCRS; standard care) – for reaching and motivating previously undiagnosed, African-American men who have sex with men (AA MSM) to be tested for HIV. Data were collected between June 2008 and February 2010 at a gay-identified, community-based organization (CBO) serving AA MSM in Washington, DC. Men were eligible to participate if they were 18–64 years old, self-identified as black or African-American, were biologically male, and self-reported oral or anal sex with a man in the past six months. Fisher's exact test of independence was used to assess differences in demographics, testing history, HIV status and sexual behaviors across the three strategies. The final sample included 470 men who met all eligibility requirements. There were no statistically significant differences in HIV positivity rates across the three strategies. However, relative to standard care, the SNS, and (to a lesser degree) the AVT strategies were more successful in recruiting men that had never been tested. Additionally, the results indicate that each strategy recruited different subgroups of men. Specifically, heterosexually identified men and men who reported engaging in unprotected sex were most likely to be recruited via SNS. Bisexually identified men and older men were most likely to be recruited via AVT or SNS, while standard care tended to reach greater proportions of young men and homosexually identified men. These findings suggest that a combination of strategies may be the best approach for engaging African-American MSM in HIV testing.

A Pilot Test of the HOPE Intervention to Explore Employment and Mental Health Among African American Gay Men Living With HIV/AIDS: Results From a CBPR Study

The Helping Overcome Problems Effectively (HOPE) intervention was developed by a community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership to improve mental health and employment outcomes of African American gay men living with HIV/AIDS. The intervention blended locally collected formative data, social cognitive theory, hope theory, and the lived experiences of African American gay men living with HIV/AIDS. The HOPE intervention included 7 weekly 3-hour group sessions, with participant assessment at baseline and 3-month post-intervention. A total of 7 African American men, who self-identified as gay and unemployed, participated. Mean age was 46.1 (range = 37-57) years. Throughout the intervention, participants developed goal-setting skills, problem-solving skills, health-promoting behaviors, and employment seeking behaviors. The results suggest that the HOPE intervention may be promising in improving mental health and employment outcomes.

“Nothing Better or Worse Than Being Black, Gay, and in the Band”

This collective case study examined the experiences of four African American gay band students attending historically Black colleges or universities (HCBUs) in the southern United States. This study explored influences that shaped the participants’ identities as they negotiated numerous complex sociocultural discourses pervasive and challenging to gay African American band students. Utilizing participative inquiry, participants were asked to read, reflect on, and respond to historical and current research literature concerning the schooling experiences of Black students. Their responses were analyzed within a multifaceted theoretical framework, including poststructual theory, critical race theory, critical theory, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (LGBT2Q) studies. Present throughout the participants’ descriptions was an ever-evolving and renegotiated gay African American identity within the HBCU band setting. Findings indicate that the construction of an African American gay male identity within an HBCU band setting was a source of tremendous consternation concurrent with positive experiences of acceptance and community. Numerous implications for music educators in K–12 settings are provided, including recognizing and stemming bullying and harassment in classroom settings.

African American Gay Youth and Their Families: Redefining Masculinity, Coping with Racism and Homophobia

The findings of this small, exploratory qualitative study of young African American gay men and their parents, combined with the extant theoretical literature, describes the unique challenges facing black gay male youths and their families. Parents and youths alike worry that gay men cannot meet the rigid expectations of exaggerated masculinity maintained by their families and communities, and they also struggle to cope with the intersecting oppressions that challenge black gay youths. These unique difficulties warrant the development of targeted interventions that can assist such families with the burdens of homophobia and racism. It is vital that clinicians engage fathers as they assist young black gay men and their families to resolve the clash between homosexuality and the male gender role expectations in their communities. In addition, clinicians are advised to help these families recognize, harness, and build upon their existing coping skills, and it is also recommended that they facilitate family discussions that lead to expanded and more flexible views of masculinity.

HIV Prevention Service Utilization in the Los Angeles House and Ball Communities: Past Experiences and Recommendations for the Future

African-American young men who have sex with men and transgender persons are at elevated risk for HIV infection. House and Ball communities, networks of mostly African-American gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals who compete in modeling and dance, represent a prime venue for HIV prevention with these difficult-to-reach populations; however, little research exists on effective approaches to HIV prevention within these communities. Using a mixed-methods approach, the present study sought to document participation in HIV prevention activities of a sample from the Los Angeles House and Ball communities (n = 263) in order to inform future service development. While 80% of participants were tested for HIV within the past 6 months, only 26% report HIV prevention program attendance. House leaders recommend a holistic approach to HIV prevention, one that incorporates attention to social problems beyond HIV, including poverty, housing difficulties, and lack of job training.