The purpose of this research is to examine the issues that make it difficult for one to consider oneself "gay" or "lesbian" in the black community. The plan of the research will be to set forth the stereotypes of black sexuality and their effect on the black community as a whole, and to discuss the positive and negative stereotypes as an index of the emergence of and attitudes toward homosexuality in that community. As appropriate, the role of interracial relationships in this environment of issues will also be treated.
The stereotypes of black sexuality have informed the sexual environment of the American black culture, and go to the interplay of psychological attitudes with sexual expression. Two principal features of the contemporary mainstream culture contribute to the difficulty that black homosexual men and women may have in expressing their sexuality in the black community. The first is the residue of cultural stereotypes that attach to the sexuality of blacks, and the second is the decisive impact of AIDS on the homosexual and heterosexual black population.
Blackwell cites the prevailingly negative images of black projected by contemporary mass media, which by and large portray black males as sexual predators, as "an irresponsible unwed father measuring his masculinity by the number of children he has fathered while not caring about providing financial support for them because 'they can get welfare'; as rapists brutally assaulting white women" (Blackwell, 1991, p. 145). This is especially true of adolescent and young adult black males, who Blackwell says are seen as "sexually aggressive, hostile, and potentially violent" (1991, p. 147). This observation is supported by Davis, who criticizes feminist commentators who in their quest for sexual equality for (mainly white) women in the culture have implied that black men "harbor an uncontrollable desire for sexual relations with white women." Davis develops her point in a way...