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

Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism Reviews

• 
  Kimba Tichenor

  In this book, Patricia Hill Collins explores the question of why racism has persisted in the United States despite the elimination of legal discrimination. Specifically, she focuses on how popular culture and media replicate, resist, and reproduce old and new forms of discrimination through their portrayals of race, gender, class and sexuality. She complicates our understanding of racism in the post-Civil Rights era by highlighting its entanglement with heterosexism, classism, misogyny, and homophobia. She argues that for anti-racist politics to be successful in the twenty-first century that it must incorporate a more sophisticated politics of gender and sexuality -- one that does not push black women or black homosexuals to the margins in an effort to maintain so-called respectability.
  
  This book would make a great addition to a course on the history of race in the United States. Just as W.E.B. Dubois showed how the color line defined the twentieth century and constrained the opportunities of African Americans in post-Civil War American, Collins details the challenges of fighting racism in a world where the color line seemingly has been erased. She points to the ways in which African-American popular culture both resists and reproduces racial stereotypes. But this book is NOT about blaming victim, but rather about the liberation of consciousness. In short she emphasizes the need to change both the system that confines peoples of color and people's of color reaction to that system, if real change is to take place. For Collins, that means that the African American community must adopt a progressive politics of gender and sexuality that no longer "mimics those of White men and women, but that reflects the needs of actual lived Black experience...In this context, Black people must rebel against existing Black sexual politics throughout the entire system; from the micro-politics that frame the one-on-one interactions of everyday life; through trying to change the ethos of the Black Church and other Black community organizations; through the micro-politics of building new social movements with other groups who are engaged in similar social justice initiatives...When it comes to issues of gender and sexuality, Black youth must lead the way in the next phase of antiracist struggle, because failing to do so virtually guarantees them an impoverished future (307)."
  
  
• 
  erin

  In Black Sexual Politics, Hill Collins offers up a dense look at the current & historical landscape of Blackness in the U.S.A. Hill Collins opens the book by explaining why issues of Black identity centered around sexuality are unique, a point that she proves thoroughly throughout the book. She also uses analysis of pop culture to help outline the "New Racism" of our post-Civil Rights culture. Ultimately Hill Collins argues that Black sexual politics must change (especially in this current age of AIDs/HIV) to become more open and inclusive (i.e., liberatory), but in order for this change to take place there must be acknowledgement of the legacy of heterosexism and misogynistic behavior/ideals, coupled with a rejection of Black (sexual) stereotypes.
  
  This text is both innovative and enlightening philosophically and theoretically, and is backed by a host of (sociologically) impressive statistics as well as individual stories.
  
  All books should be so good.
• 
  Brian TramueL

  I approached this read with the understanding that identities are always influx, complicated, and often times contradictory. The author does an incredible job proving her theory. The take-away for me was an understanding of how numerous theoretical frameworks assist us in engaging black sexual and gender politics within a historical and contemporary context.
  
  
• 
  Justin

  It's heart is in the right place but it really leaves a lot to be desired. It's not intellectually rigorous and the attempt to theorize dating really makes no attemp to account for how messy dating is in general. I don't really know who this book is for.
• 
  Critical Hysteria

  Large cocks
• 
  Ashley

  "With prison as the metaphor for Black life, freedom becomes its antithesis. Prison can be literal—actual laws and customs that foster forms of subordination of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Prison can also be figurative—ideas about heterosexism and about masculinity and femininity can keep some African Americans as securely locked up in small worlds as the most powerful laws."
• 
  Jack Lonergan

  An interesting continuation of the works of bell hooks and others who speak to the black sexual identities and the way a history of oppression has shaped and continues to shape black identity in America today. Worthy read, not without flaws, also a little out of date. Would love to read an updated version of this text.
• 
  Luminalsl

  Un must read comme à peu près toute la bibliographie de Patricia Hill Collins. Black sexual politics et La pensée féministe noire sont deux de mes bibles pour ma thèse ! Un travail vraiment extraordinaire.
• 
  Chino

  if you've heard about intersectionality and looking for something to read to further expand your knowledge on it, this is one of the books that you should read.
• 
  Mike Mena

  Great read and no wonder its a classic. This is a pretty straightforward book about sex and racism, but most impressively, a move to deconstruct the theoretical line between race and gender.
• 
  Olivia Barrow

  This book is 16 years old and it still taught me so much. Wow.
• 
  Anna Jason

  different perspective within the black community and how they view things. This book explores the black community on how they view certain aspects of their lives.
• 
  Savada

  The book are completely interesting.
• 
  Alisha

  "Black sexual politics consists of a set of ideas and social practices shaped by gender, race, and sexuality that frame Black men and women's treatment of one another, as well as how African Americans are perceived and treated by others."
  
  This a holistic look at both the past and present (or past-IN-present) ideologies of Black women and Black men and their sexualities. These repressive ideologies have spawn an array of controlling images — gender-specific depictions that are used in aid of power relations —with the sole purpose of allowing oppressive treatment (racism, sexism, heterosexism, chattel slavery, ghettoization, conditional assimilation, ect).
  
  Collins explains that her purpose is to create a wider social justice movement, as the problems talked about pertaining to the unfair treatment if African-Americans can easily start up questions about the inequalities faced in different cultures. Collins also aims to end the silencing of supposedly "cross-cutting" issues (pertaining to black women and LGBTQ Black people) that arise in antiracist (social justice) politics by showing the intersectional characteristics of oppression. Collins acknowledges that just as much as race does, gender, age, sexuality, and class all also play an important role is whether, and how much, someone is oppressed.
  
  The information here encompasses the times/practices of a lot of different periods. She talks about the Europeans discovery of Africans and the studies they used in order to create a subhuman image that would allow Africans enslavement, then the ghettoization from the early to mid-1900s the brought about the visibility of the LGBTQ community and the creation of a social hierarchy among Black people who now began to assimilation into the middle class among white people. Leading all the way up into the early 2000s with advancement of technology and capitalism that make racist practices both undetectable and omnipresent.
  
  Special attention is given to Black popular culture and it's impact in either resisting white hegemony (e.g. increased usage of the n-word among Black people) or helping it (e.g increased sexualized usage of Black women's bodies in music videos). The commodification and representation of Black popular culture in mass media is also looked at: from sports (the controlled use of athletic Black bodies for white entertainment), to hip hop culture (e.g. "Thug Life", video "hoes") to movies (e.g. Training Day, Booty Call) to tv shows (e.g. The Wire, The Cosby Show) and how each one either pushes the controlling images it gains it's meaning from or challenges them.
  
  This book discusses the inequality and disadvantages of a wide range, of all the people who cannot reach this "gold standard" of being a white heterosexual male. But the people who are most focused on (whose inequalities are explained in depth) are Black women and Black LGBTQ. There's a special consideration of young, Black, non-heterosexual, working-class women, like Sakia Gunn, who take up the very bottom of the hegemonic social totem pole and pay the ultimate price for it.
  
  This was the first sociology book I've read, probably the most scholarly book I've read thus far, with lots of statics cross-reference and critical theories. So excuse me if my review is a little subpar. The book definitely gives you a lot of facts and food-for-thought. I recommend it to just about anybody, especially in light of a lot of the racial media news being reported today (from Ferguson to the white-washed Oscars).
  
  Collins explains in the introduction that her purpose is not to give "How-To" instructions on how to solve the problems Black people face in terms of gender/sexuality issues. The book instead acts as a mirror to show just exactly what is going on, and what it means. For tragedies — such as when Black women in poverty are getting abused by both the government and their fellow Black "brothers"; or when a lesbian Black teenager is killed for threatening a man's masculinity; or when well-to-do Black middle-class men and women are used as doormats while being convinced to turn their backs on their fellow Black americans — there needs to be a special look at what internalized beliefs cause this mistreatment to happen (both inter-racially and intra-racially) and how we can break them down. When you see the specialized injustices that are being done not only to Black people as a whole, but certain subcultures within the Black community (the poor or LGBTQ), you come to understand why every Black voice must be lifted and heard in order for the collective Black race to actually begin to see progress.
• 
  Ayanna Dozier

  Patricia Hill Collins' book is a social diagnostics of sexuality in the American Black community. She examines images, literature, popular culture to trace the how Black sexuality is discussed in the public and in turn how it affects Black lives. Hill Collins' book is very much centered on sexuality insofar as it pertains to heterosexuality and thus offers scant diagnostics on the nuances and gender reversal that queer sexuality offers. This is an oversight, however, that Hill Collins is very much aware of and alludes to the possibilities that a social diagnostic can lead to when queerness and Blackness are taken into account. Moreover, Hill Collins provides readers a thorough analysis of how colonial discourse exists in the present as a continuation of past in present forms of racial bias, in which she terms the new racism. In addition, she provides a detailed historical analysis of slavery's affects on Black sexual politics, with most of harmful stereotypes being re-used imagery and discourse that originated during this period; including the image of the "unrapeable" woman and the male sexual predator. Hill Collins' book is a necessary read and intervention in gender studies as it proves the necessity of an intersectional analysis.
• 
  Cara Byrne

  This was the most disappointing book I've read in a long time. After reading Hill Collins' moving and impressive _Black Feminist Thought_, I looked forward to reading her take on "the new Racism" and gender and sexuality. I expected her to continue with some of the central claims she has made in earlier works, while considering womanism, queer thought and new race theory. Yet, instead, she makes massive claims without backing them up well, and there is very little in this book that seems innovative or complex. I appreciate this ambitious undertaking - for she examines race, sexuality, gender roles, the prison system, HIV/AIDs, economic disparities, education, crime, etc. in 300 pages, but I find bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker to be much more persuasive Black feminist writers.
  
  Many of the cultural references she brings in (with the exception of a couple TV shows and movies, including _The Wire_ and _Monster's Ball_) are from the late eighties and early nineties, making her claims less persuasive and out dated. Again, because I know Hill Collins is a bright and important scholar of our time, it makes this book even more disappointing.
• 
  Ülkü Doğan

  focusing on the social injustice in the US in a framework of intersectionality of gender, race and class basicly. examines both black men & women's representation on popular culture and the different type of experiences of segregation/discrimination/stereotyping they lived through the history and today.
  
  history of the domination of black men and women and how differently they experienced this domination; black women's and men's representations on pop culture according to their class (working class/middle class) and sexuality (sexual orientation) and how differently their position exists in a white male dominated system; their everyday life experiences and social injustices & steorotypings they bear...
  
  with all these the book introduces the concepts "new racism" and "intersectionality" showing how they are observable in everyday life.
  
  (these concepts are applicable in any form of cultural subordination comparatively.)
  
  a nice-to-read book.
• 
  Joshunda Sanders

  This book is fantastic, with a great blend of history, popular culture and gender theory analysis to go along with a strong sexuality-based critique of what she calls the new racism. She quotes some of my heroes extensively, and here is my favorite, from James Baldwin - an excerpt, actually. From Nobody Knows My Name in 1993: "Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free -- he has set himself free -- for higher dreams, for greater privileges." So dope.
• 
  Yellow-craion

  So a few years ago I read a couple of pages from the beginning, the bit with the movie theater. It got me curious.
  
  The first thing that I noticed when I started reading this? It's binarist and cis-sexist. A few years ago I wouldn't have notice and most likely wouldn't have even known those words. Now I can't help but notice. But ok, I read further, preparing myself for sexuality as in gay or straight and nothing more. I get up till page 16 where I see "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgenderED". Yeah, nope. I expected better.
• 
  Karen

  I am still reading this book and enjoying every minute of it. I have taken longer than anticipated because the author poses questions that I have to sincerely ponder on and decide what my stance is on the particular issue being raised. Although I do not agree with all of the specifics, I am in agreement with the generalities. I am looking forward to reading the other work that I have by the same author.
• 
  Krystle

  A great intersectional analysis of race, gender and sexuality. This book gives a profound analysis of intersectionality. It uses great examples to illustrate key points. A definite must read for academics who are in the social sciences: gender studies, sociology, cultural studies.
• 
  Noelle

  Thought-provoking.
• 
  Sam

  Enlightening... but the problems feel so much bigger than some of the (possible) solutions presented here.
• 
  Bradley

  Urgent and deeply penetrating; Collins argues that the conversation is long overdue and that the restraints keeping America from talking are fickle
• 
  Doug Rice

  important and powerful insights. Theoretically informed and dense but written in a way that opens rather than closes discussion and thought. Very intelligent book
• 
  Kels

  Race, Gender and the Politics of the Body
• 
  Juliana Santos

  I lived the books but some concepts where not new to me once I've read a lot of bell hooks. I don't understand why she doesn't metion her on the book.
• 
  Cool

  Stay far away from this book. Wish I could give it zero stars.