epublishing store: Intro

Sexual Health eBook Volume3
Chapter 7

Cultural Influences on African American Sexuality: The Role of Multiple Identities on Kinship, Power, and Ideology, Twinet Parmer & James J. Gordon

The issue of African American sexuality presents many historical challenges to understanding the present-day cultural context of black experiences in America. This unique history has been distinguished by the intersection of multiple identities of race and sex, class, and gender (Reynolds & Pope, 1991). These intersections can best be understood in the context of how kinship, power, and ideology came to influence and shape these multiple identities. Such intersections can be observed if we note that no other cultural group in America has had an existence based on a social construct of race that emphasizes their physical strength, sexual capacity, and ability to reproduce as a result of the institutional effects of slavery that oppressed and dominated black men, women, and children (Wyatt, 1982). Given the significance of slavery and the subsequent history of domination and internalized oppression (Lipsky, 1977; Parmer, Arnold, Natt, & Janson, 2004), sexuality can no longer be conceptualized from the dominant universal cultural perspective that assumes that people are just people. However, scholars have yet to capture the uniqueness of the historical oppression and cultural influences in America on black sexuality that acknowledges the integration of multiple identities. Although African Americans are not a monolithic group, the absences of a more comprehensive perspectives is critical in the lives of African Americans, given the way sexuality is complicated by race in the formation of American life. Weinberg and Williams (1988) noted, “It is clear that new theories are necessary to deal with the complexities between sexuality and race, class, and gender” (p. 215).

The objective of this chapter is to apply Reiss’s theory (1986, 2004) of power, ideology, and kinship as a framework in which to discuss black sexuality. Given the absences of suitable theories that would account for the cultural uniqueness of black sexuality, Reiss’s theory allows for the integration of culture, multiple identities, and sexuality. By exploring black sexuality within the context of Reiss’s theory, sexuality can be understood within the total context of ones life span. (Bowser, 1994a). More specifically, the purpose to this chapter is to (1) provide a historical overview of the influences of race, class, and gender on black sexuality across the life span of African Americans; (2) discuss how the notion of power, ideology, and kinship has shown historical continuity and consistency of ideas in contemporary African American sexuality over time; (3) to explore how sociocultural factors in contemporary American society such as medicine, law, policy, and challenged notions of gendered sexuality and risky behavior complicated by HIV/AIDS have had an impact on the shaping of contemporary African American sexuality; and (4) to conclude with implications for practice relative to themes addressed in this chapter.

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