Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism by Patricia H Collins

From the Publisher

Caricatures of Black sexuality saturate American popular culture in bootylicious rap videos and paternity tests on the Jerry Springer show. Blacks have been cast as hypersexual animals in Western culture since a scantily clad "Hottentot Venus" was displayed in a cage in Paris in the 1800s.

In Black Sexual Politics, one of America's most influential writers on race and gender explores how images of Black sexuality have been used to maintain the color line and how they threaten to spread a new brand of racism around the world today.

The ideal of pure white womanhood, Collins argues, required the invention of hot-blooded Latinas, exotic Suzy Wongs, and wanton jezebels—images that persist in the media today in everything from animal-skin bikinis to the creation of the "welfare mom." Men confront a similar bias in a society that defines African American males as drug dealers, brutish athletes, irresponsible fathers, and rapists. Collins dissects the widespread impact of these distorted messages as she explores African American love relationships, sex in youth culture, interracial romance, sexual violence, and HIV/AIDS.

A revolutionary work that touches the intimate and public lives of all African Americans, Black Sexual Politics brilliantly illuminates the subtle interplay of race, sex, and politics in American culture today.

Library Journal

In a book of sophisticated critical theory that could be used as a tool for antiracist political action, Collins (Charles Phelps Taft Professor of Sociology, Univ. of Cincinnati; Black Feminist Thought) asserts that "racism and sexism are deeply intertwined, and racism can never be solved without seeing and challenging sexism." Thus, African Americans must examine how sexual politics within black communities either reproduce or resist forms of racism. Like Stuart Hall's Representation: Cultural Representations & Signifying Practices or Mark Anthony Neal's Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic, this well-written text argues that images from popular culture shape ideas about black gender. For example, traditional stereotypes such as "the breeder woman" found in the slave-holding South have been reworked into the "welfare queen" of today's inner cities. Collins's razor-sharp analysis is unfortunately hampered by an exclusive focus on black/white social interactions, whereas contemporary American society is marked by multiculturalism. This is, however, an important work. Strongly recommend for public and academic libraries.-Katherine C. Adams, Bowdoin Coll., Brunswick, ME Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Patricia Hill Collins' brilliant and ground-breaking analysis of the urgency of a more progressive Black sexual politics among African Americans is nothing short of a tour de force. This book is sure to be a foundational text in Black gender studies and a corrective to the continued erasure of gender and sexuality as important issues in mainstream African American Studies scholarship. Her foray into popular culture is particularly insightful as is her sophisticated theoretical approach to Black gender discourse around a number of issues including class dimensions of masculinity, violence against women, and HIV/AIDS. She demonstrates with extraordinary skill the bankruptcy of gender-blind anti-racist politics in the 21st century. Her wake-up call to Black America and the nation is heart-felt and piercing. No more business-as-usual is the loud message!. (Beverly Guy-Sheftall, co-author of Gender Talk)

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents