The Beliefs Of Misconceptions And Gender, Race, And Sexuality

Throughout the matriculation of a black boy 's’ life, there are many, (labeled natural, yet are culturally, socially and institutionally based) factors, that govern the holistic views and beliefs entailed to the child. From that moment on, challenging the social structures that these norms entail suggest a sense of sensitivity, homosexuality or weakness, ultimately emasculating the highly regarded social stigmas attached with being a man. Despite being indoctrinated into the minds of black boys from an early age, there are many long lasting effects of masculinity that are in turn reciprocated in the role of black fathers, husbands, brothers and friends. Black masculinity is the self-deteriorating idealisms that attack the identity and social positions black men ascribe to.

The stereotypical misrepresentations of African-American women and men in popular culture have influenced societal views of Blacks for centuries. The typical stereotypes about Black women range from the smiling, a sexual and often obese Mammy to the promiscuous Jezebel who lures men with her sexual charms. However, the loud, smart mouthed, neck-rolling Black welfare mother is the popular image on reality television. These images portrayed in media and popular culture create powerful ideology about race and gender, which affects daily experiences of Black women in America. With few healthy relationships portrayed in the media, Black women are left to make decisions based on the options

replacement of stereotyped images of black womanhood with those that are self defined, 4) black women’s activism, and 5) sensitivity to black sexual politics. The first three themes correlate to black motherhood and living in a binary environment, one in which black people are the oppressed and white

Gay cites Bill Cosby and Don Lemon to illustrate this problem. Bill Cosby had long been respected and often seen as a father figure too, in the black community. At a 2004 NAACP ceremony, Cosby made a similar speech to his op-ed for the New York Post, admonishing the working class black community and essentially blaming them for their financial dilemmas, dubbed as the “Pound Cake Speech”. Don Lemon is the second special case cited; Lemon attempts to shame black men for “sagging” their pants by making a farfetched claim that the act is linked to prison homosexual intercourse. Lemon is a gay black man but still, through his views, shows that he sees the white heterosexual male as the cultural ideal. The rest of Lemon’s comments reiterate the same dialogue of respectability politics Cosby used, that if black people worked harder and presented themselves better they would gain acceptance from White America. These black men, like many other black people, have bought into this same “If one then all” logical fallacy about racial oppression; that if they managed to “bypass” white supremacy, then other black people have no excuse to be in their current positions. Respectability politics is a form of denial, to rationalize and justify racial prejudice and oppression. Gay notes that

The focus of this paper is detail commentary and evaluation of four different readings. The reviews will summarize the readings, provide authors arguments, and evaluate them. The readings are: An End to the Neglect of the Problem of the Negro Woman by Claudia Jones, Black Macho and Myth of the Super Woman by Michele Wallace, The Myth of Black Macho by Robert Staples and The Negro Family by Daniel Moynihan.

The stereotypical misrepresentations of African-American women and men in popular culture have influenced societal views of Blacks for centuries. The typical stereotypes about Black women range from the smiling, asexual and often obese Mammy to the promiscuous Jezebel who lures men with her sexual charms. However, the loud, smart mouthed, neck-rolling Black welfare mother is the popular image on reality television. The typical stereotype about Black men is the violent, misogynistic thug, and the ever-enduring pimp. These images portrayed in media and popular culture createpowerful ideology about race and gender, which affects daily experiences of Black women in America. With few healthy relationships portrayed in the media, Black women

The article that I will be examines is “Booty call sex, violence, and images of black masculinity” by Patricia Hill Collins. The author has examined the black experience and how the media misrepresents black men; these effects are still felt in the present. Collins was using different forms of media such as sport, film, and historic events. To help the readers to learn where hyper sexuality, violet, and criminal stereotypes of black male come from.

Examining the links between sexuality and power in a system of interlocking race, gender, and class oppression should reveal how important controlling Black women's sexuality has been to the effective operation of domination overall. The words of Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, and Alice Walker provide a promising foundation for a comprehensive Black feminist analysis.

In an attempt to define Black Feminism, Collins clarifies that it must “avoid the idealist position that ideas can be evaluated in isolation from the groups that create them (Collins 385).” This clarification forms her basis for why Black Feminism is necessary, and who it serves. Thinking about feminism historically, the concerns of black women were pushed aside in favor of fighting sexism; a notable example occurs within the Suffrage movement, where votes for white women were prioritized over women of color in order to push such legislation through. And even when feminism began looking at other social injustices, such as racism and class issues, often only prominent feminists were invited to the discussion. What resulted was, and often continues to be, a problem of white women speaking for oppressed people. It’s impossible, Collins argues, to have Black Feminist thought without examining the experiences and positions of African American women. Therefore, Black Feminism must be a movement that “encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women’s reality by those who live in it (Collins 386).” However, such a definition brings about many questions:

Patricia Hill Collins’ piece, Defining Black Feminist Thought, sets out to do exactly that: to determine what Black Feminism is, who is a Black Feminist, and who can become a Black Feminist. While not always specifically stated, her argument and analysis arises from the historical context of the role of Black women in feminist and activist spaces, as well as the social reality of differing lived experiences of African American women from traditional white female feminists. Created in 1990, Collins’ work is well situated in the time period of Third Wave Feminist thinking, incorporating strong themes of the need for intersectionality and altering opinions within feminism, as well as proposing that multiple versions of feminism can be

In the previous discussion, I talked about a lady I work with X. It was around prom time, and she really wanted to go prom dress shopping. When she was trying on a dress, a few ladies said " There's something wrong with here, either autism or down syndrome, why is she even in school." While X was in the dressing room, she over heard the ladies talk about her in a rude way. She came out of the dressing room and replied "I'm in school so I don’t end up like ignorant people like you." I was proud of her for standing up for herself, honestly. More people need to be educated about other cultures, because their ignorance not only hurts other people, but also themselves.

Misconceptions are told everywhere nowadays, it is a misunderstanding about groups that are told by untruthful events and that cannot be proven. It is a failure of understanding ideas that are going on in certain groups or individuals and that have no evidence that the statements being told are true. These misconceptions are being told because they are trying to make groups look different amongst others. Stereotypes on the other hand, are statements or ideas that are based on some truth that have been shown by particular groups. People think that just because some of the members in a group have some kind of characteristic all of the have it as well. These beliefs are told to exaggerate the simple things that are going on and they are used to

One type of prejudice I have witnessed through the course of my life would have to be when people are being bullied. Mainly people have been bullied because they are different. That is a prejudice act by reason that it is taking someone’s rights away from them. This makes me bitter due to me thinking anyone in this whole world has the right to be particular. Individuals should not get judged for expressing who they are. Also, I have observed prejudice when my mom’s friends got a divorce, the mother of the children got custody of the minors. This is primarily sex-based prejudice behavior. I felt agitated with this because I felt as if their father had the right to get custody. The mother of the children was not the finest, even though she

Throughout my study of racism as it presents itself in America, violence, gender, class, and more have all been brought to the forefront of discussions of racial oppression. Human sexuality is often subverted in these conversations, although it intersects with all of these forms of racism. African Americans are often subject to sexual stereotyping and objectification which causes them to become rigidly policed by both society and themselves (Gonzales and Rolison 715). Since sexuality presents itself as a significant way in which African Americans are oppressed, sexual persecution presents itself as a theme in many prominent pieces of African American literature. Particularly this themes present themselves in Iceberg Slim’s autobiography Pimp and Richard Wright’s novel Native Son. Despite the fact that Iceberg Slim’s popular underground autobiography and Richard Wright’s fictional sociological commentary appear to on separate ends of the African American literary spectrum, both works demonstrate how Black sexuality is policed, objectified and commodified in mid 20th century America. Studies performed by Alicia M. Gonzales and Gary Rolison for their article Social Oppression and Attitudes towards Sexual Practices prove that African American receive less sexual freedom in contemporary American, and analysis of Native Son and Pimp will exhibit they ways in which this sexual oppression presents itself in societal experiences, and how African Americans are blocked from any

The idea of a sexually ‘pure’ Cleopatra reinforces that idea that sex and a woman’s sexuality is immoral, a concept that has been proliferated within modern political discussion of black sexuality and its repercussions. These discussions often point towards black sexuality as the culprit of many social problems instead of a result of inequality, exemplifying the hypocritical and destructive rhetoric of the public sphere utilizes to use black communities as the scapegoat for the social problems for which they themselves are the largest victims. As political scientist Cathy Cohen described, “…race leaders, media voices, and policy makers eschew more complicated analysis of structural