Racism And Gay Men Of Color

Sulaimon Giwa’s aptly named Racism and Gay Men of Color arrives at a time when many of the sociocultural issues it raises have come to national attention. Yet gay men of color in Canadian GLBT communities are still subject to racism and excluded, both online and offline. If a gay man of color is not the “right” color, he is often the recipient of stereotypical racial epithets and denied sexual approbation within an erotic world where sexual desires are structured along the lines of race, ethnicity, age, disability, and class. Giwa warns against the denial that underlies much of this monolithic racism and highlights the strategies used by gay men of color to counter racism in their communities and to lead strong, effective lives. This important book will inspire advocates and activists, students and scholars, and will become indispensable in university and college courses on sexuality and race studies.

Sexual desire, often understood as personal erotic preference, is frequently seen as neutral, natural, or inevitable. Countering these commonplace assumptions, Racial Erotics shows how sexual partnering within communities of gay men is deeply embedded within larger social structures that define whiteness as desirable and normative while othering men of color. In queer erotic economies this othering may take the form of sexual rejection or fetishization of men of color, but C. Winter Han argues that the real danger of sexual racism is that it creates a hierarchy of racial worth that extends outside of erotic encounters into the everyday lives of gay men of color. In this way, sexual racism perpetuates a larger project of racial erasing that equates gayness with whiteness to secure acceptance for gay white men at the expense of queers of color. With vivid examples from interviews, media representations, and online dating sites, Han highlights the creative means through which gay men of color, cordoned off in spaces both gay and straight, produce alternative frameworks to combat dominant narratives. Racial Erotics offers a new paradigm for understanding the connection of race and queer desire, demonstrating how race profoundly shapes sexual desires among men while racialized notions of desire construct beliefs about belonging.

This edited volume examines how and where gay men of color find “home” and what kind of home they find, how they make sense of race and sexuality, and how their experiences reflect what it means to be “raced” and “sexed” in America. The contributors argue both racially and sexually marginalized groups all confront levels of racism and heterosexism that is practiced by the larger ethnic and sexual communities that use white heterosexuality as the “norm” to which all others are compared. They further argue that despite different constructions of race and ethnicity, there are similar themes for racialized groups that need to be explored.

This compelling book recounts the history of black gay men from the 1950s to the 1990s, tracing how the major movements of the times—from civil rights to black power to gay liberation to AIDS activism—helped shape the cultural stigmas that surrounded race and homosexuality. In locating the rise of black gay identities in historical context, Kevin Mumford explores how activists, performers, and writers rebutted negative stereotypes and refused sexual objectification. Examining the lives of both famous and little-known black gay activists—from James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin to Joseph Beam and Brother Grant-Michael Fitzgerald—Mumford analyzes the ways in which movements for social change both inspired and marginalized black gay men. Drawing on an extensive archive of newspapers, pornography, and film, as well as government documents, organizational records, and personal papers, Mumford sheds new light on four volatile decades in the protracted battle of black gay men for affirmation and empowerment in the face of pervasive racism and homophobia.

The Psychic Life of Racism in Gay Men’s Communities engages in the necessarily complex task of mapping out the operations of racialized desire as it circulates among gay men. In exploring such desire, the contributors to this collection consider the intersections of privilege and marginalization in the context of gay men’s lives, and in so doing, argue that as much as experiences of discrimination on the basis of sexuality are shared among many gay men, experiences of discrimination within gay communities are equally as common. Focusing specifically on racialization, the contributors offer insight as to how hierarchies, inequalities, and practices of exclusion serve to bolster the central position accorded to certain groups of gay men at the expense of other groups. Considering how racial desire operates within gay communities allows the contributors to connect contemporary struggles for inclusion and recognition with ongoing histories of marginalization and exclusion. The Psychic Life of Racism in Gay Men’s Communities is an important intervention that disputes the claim that gay communities are primarily organized around acceptance and homogeneity and instead demonstrates the considerable diversity and ongoing tensions that mark gay men’s relationships with one another.

Recent scholarship on the experiences of gay men of color have found that contemporary gay life is marked by high levels of racism directed towards gay men of color by gay white men, with much of it manifesting as negative sexual attitudes towards, and sexual exclusion or fetishization of, non-white men. In fact, several studies have now shown that gay white men are much more likely to prefer members of their own race and actively exclude non-white men as potential sexual partners than any other group. Similarly, gay men of color themselves are much more likely to prefer white men over other men of color as well. Given these experiences, the concept of "sexual racism" among gay men has garnered widespread mainstream attention in media outlets. While the idea of sexual racism has been widely discussed in the popular press, there have been fewer attempts to systematically examine how such racialized hierarchies of desire are constructed and maintained in the gay community, understood by gay men of color, and the impact these racial hierarchies have on them. In this dissertation, I attempt to address how a racial hierarchy of desire is created by "gay media," how sexual racism is experienced by gay men of color, and examine the consequences of sexual racism. Doing so, I argue that much more than simply "personal preferences," gay racial desire is a consequence of the ways that whiteness has come to be seen as being normative within the gay community and has a significant negative impact on gay men of color. At the same time, I also argue that gay men of color actively confront dominant constructions about race and actively challenge racial hierarchies of desire, thereby challenging the "white racial frame" that constructs racialized hierarchies of desire.

What does it feel like to be a minority within a minority? For lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people of color, their experiences coming out and living openly can be incredibly complicated. They may face discrimination from their community because of their sexual orientation, and they may be subjected to racism by their LGBT peers. Learn about the complicated health and personal issues related to this community, and find out how role models such as openly gay comedian Wanda Sykes, drag performer RuPaul, Latino icon Ricky Martin, and openly gay actor B.D. Wong help provide representations of LGBT people of color.

In Everyday Violence against Black and Latinx LGBT Communities, Siobhan Brooks argues that hate crimes and violence against Black and Latinx LGBT people are the products of institutions and ideologies that exist both outside and inside of Black and Latinx communities. Brooks analyzes families, educational systems, healthcare industries, and religious spaces as institutions that can perpetuate and transform the political and cultural beliefs and attitudes that engender violence toward LGBT Black and Latinx people.

Men of Color provides those working in the social services with an assessment framework for identifying and understanding the developmental needs of gay and bisexual men of color. By adding an ethnic dimension to the literature on homosexual conduct and identity, this book helps service providers improve services for men from all communities. It provides insightful implications for practice and programs, presenting valuable, practical information for planning services for African-, Asian-, Latino-, and Native Americans. Chapters in Men of Color gives you a context for working with homosexually active men of color, regardless of their specific service needs. This broad base is constructed by showing that the meaning of homosexual conduct and identity changes across cultures and generations; that the gay rights movement is having a profound impact on all ethnic/racial communities; that although the pull toward the gay community is strong, the pull to retain ethnic identities is equally strong; and that homosexuality varies culturally and historically. Contributors give: a cross-cultural comparison of identity, networks, and social support patterns among European-, African-, and Latino American men seeking services from an HIV prevention program. an ecological assessment model that can be used by social service professionals working with African American men. an historically-based description of Native American men that ends with their own special vision for clinical services. a review of the literature on Latin American and Filipino men. an historical examination of Korean norms and attitudes on homosexuality. a discussion of an applied research agenda for gay men of color that derives from the need to improve delivery of social services. Men of Color asserts that homosexually active men of color are often caught in a dilemma: they must choose between their ethnic and sexual identities, either putting their ethnicity before their gayness, or their gayness before their ethnicity. The book predicts that the lure of sexual freedom, coupled with the comfort of old traditions, will lead to a new synthesis of gay and ethnic identities and helps service providers facilitate this synthesis. Whether you’re a social service provider, social work or health educator, or gay/lesbian studies educator, you will find Men of Color a superior guide for improving your services.

A groundbreaking anthology of essays providing commentary on gender and sexuality inclusion in the antiracist movement In late 1995, the Million Man March drew hundreds of thousands of black men to Washington, DC, and seemed even to skeptics a powerful sign not only of black male solidarity, but also of black racial solidarity. Yet while generating a sense of community and common purpose, the Million Man March, with its deliberate exclusion of women and implicit rejection of black gay men, also highlighted one of the central faultlines in African American politics: the role of gender and sexuality in antiracist agenda. In this groundbreaking anthology, a companion to the highly successful Critical Race Feminism, Devon Carbado changes the terms of the debate over racism, gender, and sexuality in black America. The essays cover such topics as the legal construction of black male identity, domestic abuse in the black community, the enduring power of black machismo, the politics of black male/white female relationships, racial essentialism, the role of black men in black women's quest for racial equality, and the heterosexist nature of black political engagement. "Featuring work by Cornel West, Huey Newton, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Houston Baker, Marlon T. Riggs, Dwight McBride, Michael Awkward, Ishmael Reed, Derrick Bell, and many others, Devon Carbado's anthology stakes out new territory in the American racial landscape."—Critical America, A series edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stephancic